Malcolm Braly: Novelist of the American Prison

Abstract

Since the early 1960s, hundreds of books by American prisoners and ex-prisoners have been published-autobiographies, poetry, political and social analysis, plays, anthologies, novels.' Many of these authors were civil rights workers, antiwar activists, and revolutionaries imprisoned for their political crimes. Many more, however, were conventional criminals-burglars, murderers, rapists, robbers, pimps, prostitutes, junkies-who became authors because of what they learned while in prison. These authors have written some of the most influential and revealing documents of contemporary culture, such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice (1968), Piri Thomas' three books, and Soledad Brother (1970) and Blood in My Eye (1972) by George Jackson. We are only now beginning to recognize the historical significance of this body of literature by American criminals, and the question of its artistic significance is just being articulated. One of the earliest in this group of contemporary criminalsturned-writers was Malcolm Braly. Braly was a burglar and armed robber, a four-time loser who spent almost all his early manhood, from age eighteen to forty, in our prisons. He began writing fiction during his third term in San Quentin, and his first three published novels were all written behind bars: Felony Tank (1961), Shake Him Till He Rattles (1963), and It's Cold Out There (1966). On the Yard, his finest novel to date, offended the California Adult