The Afterlife is Letting Go

A memoiristic travelogue that illuminates the enduring legacy of the mass incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during World War II. "Both personal and choral, The Afterlife is Letting Go is 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. A stirring, trenchant, and necessary work."Christina Sharpe, author of Ordinary Notes In a series of reflective, multi-layered, and sometimes multi-voiced essays, poet Brandon Shimoda explores the afterlife of the U.S. governments forced removal and mass incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during WWII, excavating the ways these events continue to resonate today. What emerges is a panoramic, yet intimate portrait of intergenerational trauma and healing. Informed by personal/familial history, years of research and travel, including visits to museums, memorials and the ruins of incarceration sites, these essays take us on both a physical and a metaphysical journey. 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.