Street Literature

Street literature, currently the most widely read form of Black popular fiction, addresses one of the most pertinent problems in the United States: The system of mass incarceration and the disproportionate imprisonment of people of color. In particular, street literature illustrates what the book examines as ‘street-prison symbiosis’ – a mutual linkage between streets of low-income neighborhoods and prisons that manifests itself not only within the narratives, but also in the circulation of writers, novels, financial means and knowledge between the two locations.

The book offers an interdisciplinary spatial analysis that draws upon the close readings of selected novels and interviews with (formerly) incarcerated authors, publishers and distributors of street literature. It explores how actors in the scene simultaneously rely on the close linkage while also using street literature both as a form of writing and cultural-economic practice to challenge marginalizing environments.