The life of paper : letters and a poetics of living beyond captivity
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The life of paper : letters and a poetics of living beyond captivity
（American crossroads, 46）
University of California Press, c2018
- : cloth
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-301) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The Life of Paper offers a wholly original and inspiring analysis of how people facing systematic social dismantling have engaged in letter correspondence to remake themselves, from bodily integrity to subjectivity to 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, Luk demonstrates how correspondence among the incarcerated becomes a poetic act of reinvention and a means for living.
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
by "Nielsen BookData"