Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums

A poignant account of how the carceral state shapes daily life for young Black people--and how Black Americans resist, find joy, and cultivate new visions for the future.

At the Southern California Library--a community organization and an archive of radical and progressive movements--the author meets a young man, Marley. In telling Marley's story, Damien M. Sojoyner depicts the overwhelming nature of Black precarity in the twenty-first century through the lenses of housing, education, health care, social services, and juvenile detention. But Black life is not defined by precarity; it embraces social visions of radical freedom that allow the pursuit of a life of joy beyond systems of oppression.

Structured as a "record collection" of five "albums," this innovative book relates Marley's personal encounters with everyday aspects of the carceral state through an ethnographic A side and offers deeper context through an anthropological and archival B side. In Joy and Pain, Marley's experiences at the intersection of history and the contemporary political moment invite us to imagine more expansive futures.

ISBN-13: 9780520390423

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of California Press

Publication Date: 11-01-2022

Pages: 248

Product Dimensions: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.70d

Damien M. Sojoyner is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles.