Abstract
This paper presents findings from a series of creative writing seminars we developed for young men incarcerated in a Canadian medium-security federal penitentiary. The impetus for the project was twofold: to provide literary arts programming for a marginalized population and to explore how the act of writing short fiction, through its emphasis on character composition, encourages contemplation of identity and its complex socio-cultural formulations. The latter represents an extension of our seminal research on rewriting marginalized identities through memoir and personal reflection (Luce-Kapler, 2004; Sumara, 2007). As our previous studies and those of others suggest, these experiences are particularly important for individuals whose life narratives have been negatively influenced by normative structures (Ahmed, 2007; Bryson et al., 2006; Butler, 1997; Lather, 1991; Luce-Kapler, 2004; Sumara, 2007).
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© 2015 Michael Lockett, Rebecca Luce-Kapler, and Dennis Sumara
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Lockett, M., Luce-Kapler, R., Sumara, D. (2015). Scrimmage-Play: Writing and Reading Short Fiction with Incarcerated Men. In: Joseph, J., Crichlow, W. (eds) Alternative Offender Rehabilitation and Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137476821_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137476821_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55325-9
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