{"product_id":"9781609380885","title":"Demands of the Dead: Executions, Storytelling, and Activism in the United States","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe first work to combine literary criticism with other forms of death penalty-abolitionist writing,\u003ci\u003e Demands of the Dead \u003c\/i\u003edemonstrates the active importance of literature and literary criticism to the struggle for greater justice in the United States. Gathering personal essays, scholarly articles, and creative writings on the death penalty in American culture, this striking collection brings human voices and literary perspectives to a subject that is often overburdened by statistics and angry polemics. Contributors include death-row prisoners, playwrights, poets, activists, and literary scholars.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHighlighting collaborations between writers inside and outside prison, all within the context of the history of state killing laws and foundational concepts that perpetuate a culture of violent death, \u003ci\u003eDemands of the Dead \u003c\/i\u003eopens with a pamphlet dictated by Willie Francis, a teenager who survived a first execution attempt in Louisiana’s electric chair before he was subsequently killed by the state in 1947.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWriters are a conspicuous part of U.S. death-penalty history, composing a vibrant literary record of resistance to state killing. This multigenre collection both recalls and contributes to this tradition through discussions of such writers as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Gertrude Atherton, Ernest Gaines, Sonia Sanchez, Kia Corthron, and Sherman Alexie. A major contribution to literary studies and American prison studies, \u003ci\u003eDemands of the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e asserts the relevance of storytelling to ethical questions and matters of public policy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cbr\u003eContributors\u003cbr\u003eSherman Alexie\u003cbr\u003eJohn Cyril Barton\u003cbr\u003eSteve Champion\u003cbr\u003eKia Corthron\u003cbr\u003eThomas Dutoit\u003cbr\u003eWillie Francis\u003cbr\u003eH. Bruce Franklin\u003cbr\u003eTom Kerr\u003cbr\u003eDavid Kieran\u003cbr\u003eJennifer Leigh Lieberman\u003cbr\u003eJill McDonough\u003cbr\u003eAnthony Ross\u003cbr\u003eKaty Ryan\u003cbr\u003eElizabeth Ann Stein\u003cbr\u003eRick Stetter\u003cbr\u003eMatthew Stratton\u003cbr\u003eJason Stupp\u003cbr\u003eDelbert Tibbs\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Iowa Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47037341237488,"sku":"9781609380885","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781609380885_p0.jpg?v=1763838195","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781609380885","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}