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.


Author: Damien M. Sojoyner
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 11/01/2022
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780520390416
ISBN10: 0520390415
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional | General

About the Author
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.