The Life of Paper
：Letters and a Poetics of Living Beyond Captivity
( American Crossroads )
Publication subTitle ：Letters and a Poetics of Living Beyond Captivity
Publication series ：American Crossroads
Author： Luk Sharon
Publisher： University Of California Press
Publication year： 2017
E-ISBN: 9780520968820
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780520296244
Subject： C95 Ethnology
Keyword： 民族学
Language： ENG
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Description
The Life of Paper offers a wholly original and inspiring analysis of how people facing systematic social dismantling have engaged letter correspondence to remake themselves—from bodily integrity to subjectivity and collective and spiritual being. Exploring the evolution of racism and confinement in California history, this ambitious investigation disrupts common understandings of the early detention of Chinese migrants (1880s–1920s), the internment of Japanese Americans (1930s–1940s), and the mass incarceration of African Americans (1960s–present) in its meditation on modern development and imprisonment as a way of life. Situating letters within global capitalist movements, racial logics, and overlapping modes of social control, Sharon Luk demonstrates how correspondence becomes a poetic act of reinvention and a way to live for those who are incarcerated.
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