SEEN illuminates the stories and creative expressions of artists within and beyond the carceral system. Developed collaboratively by the exhibition’s contributors, this curated collection of books, essays, and articles delves into themes of incarceration’s human impact, systemic injustice, and the transformative power of art and storytelling.

Self-guided tour materials are available for SEEN. Inquire at the front desk during your visit.

Recommended Reading

Mike Alberti (Editor), Drop a Kite (The Tenth Anniversary of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, 2011-2021) (MPWW, 2021)

Deborah Appleman, Words No Bars Could Hold: Literacy Learning in Prison (WW Norton, 2019)

Deborah Appleman, Ed., From the Inside Out: Letters to Young Men and Other Writings (Student Press Initiative, 2009)

Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Coming into Language" (PEN America, 2014)

Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand (Grove Press 2002)

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, 2013)

Liat Ben-Moshe, Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)

Reginald Dwayne Betts, Felon: Poems (WW Norton, 2021)

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (Grand Central Publishing, 2019 edition)

Adrienne Maree Brown, Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation (AK Press, 2021)

Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice (AK Press, 2020)

C. Fausto Cabrera and Alec Soth, The Parameters of Our Cage (Mack Books, 2024)

Zeke Caligiuri, This is Where I Am: A Memoir (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)

Zeke Caligiuri, American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion (Coffee House Press, 2023)

Angela Y. Davis, Abolition: Poliitics, Practices, Promises (Haymarket, 2024)

Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (Seven Stories Press, 2023)

Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Peipza-Samarasinha, Beyond Survival: Stratagies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (AK Press, 2020)

Nicole Fleetwood, Marking Time: Art in the Time of Mass Incarceration (Harvard University Press, 2020)

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation (Verso Books, 2023)

Kennedy Gisege, The Liturgy of Smell (Redbird Chapbooks, 2016)

Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm (Parallax Press)

Rachel Herzing and Justin Piché, How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment (Haymarket, 2024)

George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (City Lights, 1994)

Mitchell S. Jackson, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family (Scribner, 2020)

James Kilgore, Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (New Press, 2015)

Mariame Kaba, We Do This Til We Free Us (Haymarket, 2021)

Mariame Kaba, See You Soon (Haymarket, 2022)

Mariame Kaba and bria royal, Missing Daddy (Haymarket, 2019)

Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie, No More Police: A Case for Abolition (New Press, 2022)

Margarett McBride and David Wilkerson, Dear Dad / Love Nelson: The Story of One Boy and his Incarcerated Father (Free Spirit Press)

Erica Meiners, Right to Be Hostile (Routledge, 2007)

Joyce Carol Oates (Editor), Prison Noir (Akashic Books, 2014)

Cara Page and Erica Woodland, Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety (North Atlantic Books, 2023)

PEN America (edited by Caits Meissner), The Sentences that Create Us: Crafting a Writer's Life in Prison (PEN America, 2022)

Sarith Peou, Corpse Watching (Tinfish Press, 2007)

Sarith Peou, Humanity Restored: As I Am, So is My Nation (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017)

Junauda Petrus, Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? (Penguin Random House, 2023)

Andrea Ritchie, Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies (AK Press, 2023)

Justin Rovillos, American Inmate (Haymarket, 2024)

Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson, We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition (Haymarket, 2024)

Danielle Sered, Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair (New Press, 2021)

Erin Sharkey, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions, 2023)

Leanne Betasmosake Simpson, As We Have always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)

Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During Crisis (and the Next) (Verso Books, 2020)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Signet Classics, 2008 edition)

Louise K. Waakaa'igan, This is Where: Poems (Willow Publishing, 2020)

Antonio Williams, The Dream Weaver (Cadmus Publishing, 2023)

Peter Williamson and Deborah Appleman, School, Not Jail: How Educators Can Disrupt School Pushout and Mass Incarceration 
(Teachers College Press, 2021)