Under these conditions, it shouldn’t be surprising, but is rarely considered, that such daily interactions produce and reproduce white racial resentment among many correctional officers and fuel the racialized tensions that prisoners often describe as the worst forms of dehumanization.Īngela J. Smith and Hattery explore the outcome of building prisons in rural, economically depressed communities, staffing them with white people who live in and around these communities, filling them with Black and brown bodies from urban areas and then designing the structure of solitary confinement units such that the most private, intimate daily bodily functions take place in very public ways. Hattery and Earl Smith present 'Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement'īased on hundreds of hours of observation in solitary confinement units and interviews with both those who are incarcerated and those who work in solitary confinement, Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement, uncovers the ways in which specific structures of solitary confinement, including the close and intimate contact between the incarcerated and the correctional officer, serve as a petri dish that fuels the production and reproduction of white racial resentment. Burke has a strong point of view as a writer, and I look forward to seeing more from her.Angela J. Not just the African-American experience, though that's different enough in itself from what you find in run of the mill speculative fiction, but characters who are down and out, who are at the end of their ropes, who are blamed for things they didn't do and know damn well why.

Review 2: What I like best about these eleven stories, which range in tone from the fantastic to the horrific, is that Burke writes about people and situations I rarely get to read about in speculative fiction. People who are looking for something different from the usual horror-and who aren't afraid to look ugly realities in the face to see who flinches first. (That said, the speculative elements are well-chosen and anything but run of the mill.) The stories in this collection are filled with sharp bites that leave you worrying how they might fester if you dwell too long on them.

(Only managed 2 this year, but what a great 2!) This book does something I have rarely seen accomplished well in fiction: It makes injustice and the sense of being socially trapped in a sick system the root of an awful, claustrophobic, paralyzing fear-without going very far at all from the real world. Review 1: My second Women in Horror Month read.

Let's Play White by Chesya Burke