The Life of Paper: Letters and a Poetics of Living Beyond Captivity

by Sharon Luk

Overview

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. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520296244
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	11/10/2017
Series:	American Crossroads , #46
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sharon Luk is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Oregon. 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction: The Life of Paper

Part One: Detained
1 • The Inventions of China
2 • Imagined Genealogies (for All Who Cannot Arrive)

Part Two: Interned
3 • “Detained Alien Enemy Mail: EXAMINED”
4 • Censorship and the / Work of Art, Where They Barbed the / Fourth Corner Open

Part Three: Imprisoned
5 • Ephemeral Value and Disused Commodities
6 • Uses of the Profane

Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index