Description
Book SynopsisReshaping Beloved Community: The Experiences of Black Male Felons and Their Impact on Black Radical Traditions offers a reflexive interrogation on the history of black male incarceration in the United States starting in the nineteenth century to both illustrate the complex ways black male felons have been discursively constructed and the various techniques utilized in the United States to erase the contributions of black male felons and their black radical projects. This erasure has left many black men without the benefit of fellowship and community. Therefore, Reshaping Beloved Community focuses on particular black male felons and their cultural production to highlight experiences of blackness that is often marginalized or ignored. In order to characterize these experiences and contributions of black male felons, Reshaping Beloved Community expands Victor Anderson's definition of creative exchange by offering contemplative conversations of black male felons in history and the cultura
Trade ReviewMarlon Smith provides a necessary critique of the black felon experience in a carceral state where slavery remains constitutionally mandated within the structure of the 13th Amendment. This brilliant collection of experienced thought serves as a necessary evolution from Alexander’s New Jim Crow to a development of the deconstruction of those ritualistic sacrifices at the altar of justice. -- Howard Henderson, Professor and Director of the Center for Justice Research, Texas Southern University
Marlon Smith has written a fine book which expands the ways in which we think about the black radical intellectual tradition. It needs to be read by all those who struggle for justice today. -- Anthony Bogues, Brown University
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1 Slave and Free: The Mapping of Race, Religion, and Punishment in the New World Chapter 2 The Construction of Nineteenth Century Black Prison Radicals: An Address to Non-Reflexive Interpretations Chapter 3 A Challenge to Black Heroic Images: Huddie Ledbetter and the Politics of a Black Male Felon Chapter 4 20th Century Black Radical Prison Intellectuals: Malcolm X, George Jackson, and the Expansion of Nineteenth Century Black Prison Praxis Chapter 5 Prison Prophets: Twenty First Century Black Male Felons on Race, Religion and Mass Incarceration Chapter 6 Expanding the Beloved Community: Black Church, Black Felons and Mass Incarceration Conclusion Where Do We Go From Here: Gender, Education and Sexuality Bibliography About the Author
