Prison Writings by Leonard Peltier || Literature-Biographies & Memoirs

Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance by Leonard Peltier || Edited by Harvey Arden || United States Prisoner #89637-132 || Biographies-Literature-Letters-Memoirs

In September of 2022, twenty-five years after Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents, the DNC unanimously passed a resolution urging President Joe Biden to release him. Peltier has affirmed his innocence ever since his sentencing in 1977. His case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen's bestselling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse and many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted.

“It would be inadequate to describe Leonard Peltier’s Prison Writings as a classic of prison literature, although it is that. It is also a cry for help, an accusation against monstrous injustice, a beautiful expression of a man’s soul, demanding release.”
- Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

Prison Writings is a wise and unsettling book, both memoir and manifesto, chronicling his life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Invoking the Sun Dance, in which pain leads one to a transcendent reality, Peltier explores his suffering and the insights it has borne him.

“For too long, both Leonard’s supporters and detractors have seen him as a metaphor, as a public figure worthy of political rallies and bumper stickers, but very rarely as a private man who only wants to go home. I pray this book will bring Leonard home.”
- Sherman Alexie, author of Indian Killer

He also locates his experience within the history of the American Indian peoples and their struggles to overcome the federal government's injustices. Edited by Harvey Arden, with an Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, and a Preface by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.