Discovering identity in James Tyman's Inside Out: An Autobiography of a Native Canadian (Prison writings)

James Tyman's "Inside Out: An Autobiography of a Native Canadian (1989), wr itten while the author was serving time in the Saskatoon Correctional Cente r, is, on one level, a complex exploration of, and negotiation through, the ways in which a person can assert an individual identity against a seeming ly thorough subjection to social structures. At the same time, however, Tym an shows how that notion of individuality cannot exist without some form of subjection to a social framework. Tyman uses his life-history as a means o f demonstrating the possibility that an active agency can be constructed th rough a redefinition of the boundaries of identity.