That's a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and Poetry by Artists Teaching in Carceral Institutions

by Leigh Sugar (Editor)

Overview

Frank, eye-opening writing by "arts in corrections" educators

Poetry and prose by artists, writers, and activists who’ve taught workshops in U.S. criminal legal institutions, including acclaimed writers Ellen Bass, Joshua Bennett, Jill McDounough, E. Ethelbert Miller, Idra Novey, Joy Priest, Paisley Rekdal, Christopher Soto, and Michael Torres; the late arts in corrections pioneers Buzz Alexander and Judith Tannenbaum; and Guggenheim Award-winning choreographer Pat Graney. These educators demonstrate a diverse range of experiences. Among the questions they ask: Does our work support the continuation or deconstruction of a mass incarcerating society? What led me to teach in prison? How do I resist the “savior” or “helper” narrative? A book for anyone seeking to understand the prison industrial complex from a human perspective. All author royalties from this book will be donated to Dances for Solidarity, a project that brings arts opportunities to people incarcerated in solitary confinement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613322123
Publisher:	New Village Press
Publication date:	10/03/2023
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Leigh Sugar is a Michigan-born writer, teacher, and dancer, who has facilitated creative writing workshops through the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) at Cooper Street Correctional Facility in Jackson, MI, and co-edited PCAP’s annual Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing (Vol. 4–6). She has taught writing at the Institute for Justice and Opportunity, NYU, Poetry Foundation, Justice Arts Coalition, and beyond. Leigh holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University. Her writing appears in Poetry magazine, Split This Rock, jubilat, Honey Literary, and elsewhere.

Editorial Reviews

"Brilliantly illuminates truths about incarceration ... Prisons are built to separate the incarcerated from the rest of the community, to silence their voices ... Works like That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It expose the cruelty and absurdity of that intention."

Arts Fuse

"“Sugar and the collected writers contend with the emotional upheavals and moral hazards of teaching in prisons. Here, in knife-edged detail, is prison’s mundane hell: the “ceremonies” of entry and exit, the arbitrary rules, the pointless cruelties. Here, too, are careful portraits of incarcerated students and writers, who challenge their would-be teachers and write with an urgency that most of us will never possess.”"

attorney, public defender, writer - Marshall Thomas

"“That’s a Pretty Thing shows us that it is possible to seek beauty from hell; that it is possible to cultivate sweetness and honesty in the face of brutality and betrayal. We learn that buried deep in the American carceral system are people. People who love and hurt and think and grow. People who have something to say if only we would listen.”"

Acting Director, ACLU Justice Division; project manager of President Obama’s Clemency Initiative; founding board m - Cynthia W. Roseberry

"“This book has translated the ancient and forgotten language of the dead into the organic syllable of the living. As the Prince in Hamlet identifies “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns,” the prose and poetry warriors in That's a Pretty Thing to Call It go where the dead white poets feared to tread – beyond the silk veil that separates the living from the civilly dead.”"

author of Guerrillas in the Mist, Pushcart Prize nominee, poet, playwright, and solo performance artist. - Michael Rhynes