1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910461616703321

Titolo

Demands of the dead [[electronic resource] ] : executions, storytelling, and activism in the United States / / edited by Katy Ryan

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Iowa City, : University of Iowa Press, c2012

ISBN

1-60938-103-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (329 p.)

Altri autori (Persone)

RyanKaty <1968->

Disciplina

810.8/09206927

Soggetti

Prisoners' writings, American

Capital punishment in literature

Executions and executioners in literature

Capital punishment - Moral and ethical aspects - United States

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Acknowledgments and Permissions; Introduction - Katy Ryan; Part 1: Words through Walls; My Trip to the Chair - Willie Francis; Living Death: Ernest Gaines's A Lesson before Dying and the Execution of Willie Francis - Jason Stupp; The Sword into a Pen - Steve Champion; Writing with the Condemned: On Editing and Publishing the Work of Steve Champion - Tom Kerr; Leaving Death Row: A Screenplay - Elizabeth Ann Stein; Dead Man's Soap - Rick Stetter; Part 2: History and State Power; Billy Budd and Capital Punishment: A Tale of Four Centuries - H. Bruce Franklin; Poems - Jill McDonough

December 26, 1862: Chaska August 23, 1927: Nicola Sacco; May 3, 1946: Willie Francis; October 9, 2002: Aileen Wuornos; Antigallows Activism in Antebellum American Literature - John Cyril Barton; Electric Sensations and Executions in Gertrude Atherton's Patience Sparhawk and Her Times - Jennifer Leigh Lieberman; Life by Asphyxiation - Kia Corthron; Routines - Anthony Ross; Part 3: Voices and Bodies in Resistance; Jacques Derrida on Pain of Death - Thomas Dutoit; Capital Punishment - Sherman Alexie; Lynching, Embodiment, and Post-1960 African American Poetry - David Kieran

State Killing, the Stage of Innocence, and The Exonerated - Katy Ryan



Rap Sheet of Capitol Crimes: Music, Murder, and Aesthetic States of Terror - Matthew Stratton; Poems - Delbert L. Tibbs; A Poem for No Reason; For Gary Graham, a.k.a. Shaka Sankofa; Death Law; I Need a Poem; Contributors; Selected Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

The first work to combine literary criticism with other forms of death penalty-abolitionist writing, Demands of the Dead demonstrates the active importance of literature and literary criticism to the struggle for greater justice in the United States. Gathering personal essays, scholarly articles, and creative writings on the death penalty in American culture, this striking collection brings human voices and literary perspectives to a subject that is often overburdened by statistics and angry polemics. Contributors include death-row prisoners, playwrights, poets, activists, and literature.