Author Heather Ann Thompson has filed suit against the state of New York’s corrections department for banning her book about the Attica prison riot, Hyperallergic reports.
Thompson’s lawsuit claims that prisoners at Attica and other New York correctional facilities have been blocked from reading Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, her 2016 book about the rebellion.
Thompson’s book, which chronicles the prisoner uprising that led to the deaths of 43 people, won the Pulitzer Prize in history and was a finalist for the National Book Award. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “impressively authoritative and thoughtfully composed.”
“State prison officials purporting to act under a media censorship program have barred incarcerated people from accessing Blood in the Water, blocking Professor Thompson herself from sharing the book with people in state prisons and denying her the opportunity to contest this censorship,” the lawsuit reads in part.
The suit argues that the ban violates the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Thompson is asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to “permanently enjoin Defendants from continuing to violate the United States Constitution, forbidding them from preventing the distribution of Plaintiff’s book, Blood in the Water, in the New York prison system.”
Betsy Ginsberg, a lawyer representing Thompson, told Hyperallergic that Thompson’s book is “a comprehensive historical text.”
“The idea that our government would deny incarcerated people to read about this history is entirely counter to our constitution and the basic principle of free expression that this country was founded upon,” Ginsberg said.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
