3 - Wideman’s Family Stories and the Carceral Archipelago

Summary

The rise in prison populations in the 1980s coupled with the silencing of the voices of those in prison compromised the visibility of some Black writers.Writers who were not incarcerated began to write about the prison experience, especially in terms of its effect on families.Although that trend can be seen earlier and later, the neoconservative 1980s catalyzed the need for a new approach to Black prison writing that would enable prisoners’ stories to be told by family members.At the vanguard of that movement is John Edgar Wideman whose willingness to tell the story of his incarcerated brother changed the trajectory of contemporary African American literature and its intersection with prison writing.This chapter utilizes the lens of Michel Foucault’s concept of the carceral archipelago in order to advance a broader literary/cultural critique.Foucault enables us to extend Wideman’s inquiry outward from prison into a series of institutions designed to preserve and promote the idea of racial hierarchy despite mythological national claims of opportunity, democracy, equality, and equal justice for all well after the abolition of slavery and the end of legal segregation.