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Available From UC Press
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.
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.
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.
"Damien M. Sojoyner's Joy and Pain is a powerfully creative project that maps and indicts the everyday injustices of carcerality, demonstrates humanity's resilience and capacity to resist, and illuminates new forms of abolitionist praxis. His brilliance as a scholar and commitment as a scholar-activist shine through in this must-read book."—Barbara Ransby, John D. MacArthur Chair and Professor of Black Studies and Gender and Women's Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago
"Joy and Pain provides a much-needed offering in the conversation about carcerality. The mixture of ethnography, archival research, analysis of the present and of the 1960s and 1970s, and the specific (yet deep) read of regional politics makes the book a standout. The love Sojoyner and narrator Marley have for Los Angeles is powerful and acts as an exciting guide for the reader."—Bianca C. Williams, author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism
"Sojoyner's approach deprovincializes the socially liquidating power of incarceration. Joy and Pain examines carceral state violence as a far-reaching, permeating flow of relationships that affects nearly every aspect of Black life in Los Angeles. Sojoyner meshes a tradition of Black ethnography and radical and experimental archival study to create a riveting scholarly narrative."—Dylan Rodríguez, author of White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide
"Joy and Pain provides a much-needed offering in the conversation about carcerality. The mixture of ethnography, archival research, analysis of the present and of the 1960s and 1970s, and the specific (yet deep) read of regional politics makes the book a standout. The love Sojoyner and narrator Marley have for Los Angeles is powerful and acts as an exciting guide for the reader."—Bianca C. Williams, author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism
"Sojoyner's approach deprovincializes the socially liquidating power of incarceration. Joy and Pain examines carceral state violence as a far-reaching, permeating flow of relationships that affects nearly every aspect of Black life in Los Angeles. Sojoyner meshes a tradition of Black ethnography and radical and experimental archival study to create a riveting scholarly narrative."—Dylan Rodríguez, author of White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide