I read an insightful article this week called JG Ballard and the Fiction of Enclosed Space that discussed JG Ballard, the author of the novel Empire of the Sun, and gave a background into a part of his life spent in confinement. It turns out that he spent time in prison in Shanghai as a young child along with his mother, father and sister. This period of imprisonment affected his personality and the theme of life within confined spaces became one of his major themes as a writer. For me, the idea of a young child being tramatically imprisoned along with his family was very moving, and I decided to see if I could find stories about other writers who had had prison backgrounds. I searched Google for writers + prison and came up with some very interesting matches. The first one I looked at was about a writer named Hu Shigen who is in prison now. Hu Shigen, 
a political activist and dissident writer from China, was imprisoned on 'counter-revolutionary' charges in 1992 after participating in the planning of 4 June Tiananmen Square memorial demonstrations. I remembered him from the Chinese democratic activities broadcast on TV at the time 15 years ago, and it was hard to think about him sitting in prison, being monitored by other inmates and being denied the chance to talk to anyone. Heavy stuff.
After that, I tried writing + prison and came across a group called PEN, the Prison Writing Program that "believes in the restorative and rehabilitative power of writing, by providing hundreds of inmates across the country with skilled writing teachers and audiences for their work." This program provides a unique oppurtunity for prison inmates to learn to express themselves freely and to encourage the use of the written word as a legitimate form of power. Although the concept of years of imprisonment was hard to imagine, the idea that this group was providing an excellent means of rehabilitation for it's inmates was encouraging.
a political activist and dissident writer from China, was imprisoned on 'counter-revolutionary' charges in 1992 after participating in the planning of 4 June Tiananmen Square memorial demonstrations. I remembered him from the Chinese democratic activities broadcast on TV at the time 15 years ago, and it was hard to think about him sitting in prison, being monitored by other inmates and being denied the chance to talk to anyone. Heavy stuff.After that, I tried writing + prison and came across a group called PEN, the Prison Writing Program that "believes in the restorative and rehabilitative power of writing, by providing hundreds of inmates across the country with skilled writing teachers and audiences for their work." This program provides a unique oppurtunity for prison inmates to learn to express themselves freely and to encourage the use of the written word as a legitimate form of power. Although the concept of years of imprisonment was hard to imagine, the idea that this group was providing an excellent means of rehabilitation for it's inmates was encouraging.
Although this may be seen as a slightly depressing aspect of the writing world, I had not been exposed to the concept of prisoners as writers before and the thought intrigued me. I found a very interesting Book Review on Prison Writing in 20th Century America that covered many famous writers that wrote in prison, including the author and political activist Malcolm X. It mentioned that prison was a fertile ground for writers and musicians but that it wasn't until 1968 that legislature formally abandoned the concept of "civil death" and began protecting manuscripts written by prisoners.
This is my hope for this particular blogging post. May we as authors not take our freedom to write for granted, but may we learn from our colleagues behind prison bars that words are, indeed, a legitimate form of power.
writer4web
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