From the Iron House: Imprisonment in First Nations Writing

ISBN-13: 9781554585809 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 162 str.

Deena Rymhs

Opis

In From the Iron House: Imprisonment in First Nations Writing, Deena Rymhs identifies continuities between the residential school and the prison, offering ways of reading "the carceral"--that is, the different ways that incarceration is constituted and articulated in contemporary Aboriginal literature. Addressing the work of writers like Tomson Highway and Basil Johnston along with that of lesser-known authors writing in prison serials and underground publications, this book emphasizes the literary and political strategies these authors use to resist the containment of their institutions. The first part of the book considers a diverse sample of writing from prison serials, prisoners' anthologies, and individual autobiographies, including Stolen Life by Rudy Wiebe and Yvonne Johnson, to show how these works serve as second hearings for their authors--an opportunity to respond to the law's authority over their personal and public identities while making a plea to a wider audience. The second part looks at residential school narratives and shows how the authors construct identities for themselves in ways that defy the institution's control. The interactions between these two bodies of writing--residential school accounts and prison narratives--invite recognition of the ways that guilt is colonially constructed and how these authors use their writing to distance themselves from that guilt. Offering new ways of reading Native writing, From the Iron House is a pioneering study of prison literature in Canada and situates its readings within international criticism of prison writing. Contributing to genre studies and theoretical understandings of life writing, and covering a variety of social topics, this work will be relevant to readers interested in indigenous studies, Canadian cultural studies, postcolonial studies, auto/biography studies, law, and public policy.

Spis treści

Table of Contents for From the Iron House: Imprisonment in First Nations Writing by Deena Rymhs

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: Genre in the Institutional Setting of the Prison

Barred Subject: Leonard Peltier' s Prison Writings

James Tyman's Inside Out: An Autobiography by a Native Canadian

Auto/biographical Jurisdictions: Collaboration, Self-Representation, and the Law in Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman

Prison Collections and Periodicals

Part II: Genre in the Institutional Setting of the Residential School

A Residential School Memoir: Basil Johnston's Indian School Days

""It is the law"": Disturbing the Authoritative Word in Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen

Hated Structures and Lost Talk: Making Poetry Bear the Burden

Autobiography as Containment: Jane Willis's Geniesh: An Indian Girlhood

Conclusion

Works

Index