When the Smoke Cleared

“Celes Tisdale has been able to inspire men in one of the country’s most notorious hellholes, Attica prison, where men were mowed down like dogs under the directions of an ambitious governor who wanted to shed his reputation as a liberal and show racists in his party that he could practice tough love. The poems from Tisdale’s workshop stand up next to any of those published in contemporary anthologies. Shouldn’t those who manage our public schools be embarrassed? Is it because Tisdale is a poet? A Black man? Someone who directs his students to literature from writers who share their experience, instead of a curriculum that is little more than a loyalty oath to Eurocentrism?” - Ishmael Reed

“The publication of this collection comes at an urgent moment as activists and freedom fighters are forcing institutions and public culture to reckon with the history and present reality of anti-Black violence, police brutality and the centuries-long subjugation of Black people. Offering an insightful and historically specific contribution to the need to better understand and abolish the carceral state, When the Smoke Cleared provides an invaluable contribution to prison studies, the Black radical tradition, and the history of the Attica uprising.” - Nicole R. Fleetwood, author of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration

"When the Smoke Cleared . . . beautifully documents what it means to bear witness while teaching, and the great responsibility that comes with ushering voices from the inside of prison walls to the outside. . . . When the Smoke Cleared is a time capsule of the sharp minds, open hearts, and courageous souls of men brutalized by the United States criminal justice system." - Malcolm Tariq, PEN America

"When the Smoke Cleared . . . reveals a great deal about survival in the wake of state violence and about the uses of prison education. . . . Supporting efforts like Tisdale’s are important, not because they reform the institution, but because they can aid incarcerated people in building inside-outside relations and solidaristic organizing across facilities." - Elias Rodriques, Dissent

"Among the many strengths of this anthology is a blunt acknowledgment of the uprising as part of much larger historical mechanisms: namely, the last gasps of the civil rights movement and the nation’s violent reaction to Black liberation. . . . The poems serve as a bulwark against the forgetting of the Attica uprising itself, but they also document the inner life and creative expression of the incarcerated—making for a visceral and intimate argument in favor of prison abolition." - J. Howard Rosier, The Nation

"A riveting contribution to contemporary literary history and recent social histories of the uprising. This volume poses far-reaching questions about prisons as sites of cultural production and the mobilization of Black political subjectivity at the beginning of what we now call the age of mass incarceration." - David Sherman, Los Angeles Review of Books

"A valuable glimpse into the beginnings of prison and justice writing programs in the US, especially ones focused on the African American experience, as well as a reminder of the historical and continued importance of such workshops in transforming the US carceral system." - Timothy Bradford, World Literature Today