The Afterlife Is Letting Go is a meditative exploration of Japanese American incarceration during WWII by Brandon Shimoda, exploring the "afterlife" of forced removal and mass incarceration and its resonance today. It offers a panoramic portrait of intergenerational trauma and healing, connecting the treatment of Japanese Americans to other forms of oppression and state violence.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 232 pages
Publication date: 23 January 2025
Publisher: City Lights Books

The Afterlife Is Letting Go

The Afterlife Is Letting Go is a meditative consideration of Japanese American incarceration during WWII by Brandon Shimoda, author of the PEN Open Book Award-winning The Grave on the Wall. Matt Seidel, Publishers Weekly's Big Indie Books, describes it as "deeply felt, precise, and as generous in its insights as it is unsparing in its critiques of how exclusion zones proliferate and reach across time and space." Christina Sharpe, author of Ordinary Notes, calls it "a stirring, trenchant, and necessary work."

In a series of reflective, multi-layered, sometimes multi-voiced essays, poet Brandon Shimoda explores the "afterlife" of the U.S. government's forced removal and mass incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during WWII. These essays take us on both a physical and a metaphysical journey, informed by personal/familial history, years of research and travel, including visits to museums, memorials and the ruins of incarceration sites. What becomes increasingly clear are the infinite connections between the treatment of Japanese Americans and other forms of oppression, criminalization, dispossession, and state violence enacted by the United States, past, present, and ongoing.

The Afterlife Is Letting Go

The Afterlife Is Letting Go is a meditative consideration of Japanese American incarceration during WWII by Brandon Shimoda, author of the PEN Open Book Award-winning The Grave on the Wall. Matt Seidel, Publishers Weekly's Big Indie Books, describes it as "deeply felt, precise, and as generous in its insights as it is unsparing in its critiques of how exclusion zones proliferate and reach across time and space." Christina Sharpe, author of Ordinary Notes, calls it "a stirring, trenchant, and necessary work."

In a series of reflective, multi-layered, sometimes multi-voiced essays, poet Brandon Shimoda explores the "afterlife" of the U.S. government's forced removal and mass incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during WWII. These essays take us on both a physical and a metaphysical journey, informed by personal/familial history, years of research and travel, including visits to museums, memorials and the ruins of incarceration sites. What becomes increasingly clear are the infinite connections between the treatment of Japanese Americans and other forms of oppression, criminalization, dispossession, and state violence enacted by the United States, past, present, and ongoing.

Weight: 322g
Dimension: 206 x 380 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780872869295