Benjamin Weber on American Purgatory at Chevalier’s Books
Join Chevalier's Books for a discussion about the newly published American Purgatory and the history of mass incarceration, empire, and prison resistance with author Benjamin Weber and in conversation with poet, activist, and journalist Luis J. Rodriguez. A vivid work of hidden history that spans the wars to subjugate Native Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, the conquest of the western territories, and the creation of an American empire in Panama, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, American Purgatory reveals how “prison imperialism”—the deliberate use of prisons to control restive, subject populations—is written into our national DNA, extending through to our modern era of mass incarceration.