Patrick Elliot AlexanderFrom Slave Ship to Supermax: Mass Incarceration, Prisoner Abuse, and the New Neo-Slave Novel

This scholar provides an exceptional interdisciplinary analysis on classic African-American literature texts and changes how you think, read, and teach. This is a must have book!

Patrick Elliot Alexander links policing, mass incarceration, and the U.S. prison-industrial complex in contemporary society with social control practices imposed on captives during the Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery. Childs and Alexander present perspectives on captive people’s acts of resistance to slavery and its vestiges in the contemporary criminal justice system as depicted in African American literature and culture. We can think about Alexander's work in connection with Dennis Childs's book, Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang. Alexander's book includes compelling arguments about similarities between enslaved people and contemporary Black people's carceral experiences.