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froggoz13's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
3.25
The beginning of the book is very theoretical and information dense so it was quite difficult to get through. A lot of it was about American economics, which doesn't really interest me that much. In the second half of the book, the public perception of crime is discussed as well as how racism is embedded in many systems, which I do find very interesting. At the end of the book there is a beautiful collection of poetry and prose on the topic of imprisonment which I loved. There are some beautiful poems and quotes in that part and it is a great way to wrap up a book and to leave the reader thinking about incarceration.
roeiwrites's review against another edition
5.0
The book is illuminating to the point of constantly disturbing you and upending your understanding of systemic racism, whether this is the first book you read on the topic or the twentieth.
But Jackie Wang doesn't only hit you over the head with sad injustices, she couches them in the personal, shining light on the humanity of the most inhumane of places and practices. Suffice to say I cried, multiple times, throughout.
But Jackie Wang doesn't only hit you over the head with sad injustices, she couches them in the personal, shining light on the humanity of the most inhumane of places and practices. Suffice to say I cried, multiple times, throughout.
slothful_1592's review against another edition
5.0
wow what a book! so heterogeneous & full of different kinds of essays about policing, racial capitalism & antiblack violence in the U.S., mixing all this theorising and thinking with autobiography and poetry—Jackie Wang’s brother was sentenced to Juvenile Life Without Parole when age 17 (crazy enraging that such a practice exists, to lock up a (racialised) young person for the rest of their lives) and this haunts the entire book and makes Wang’s personal stakes in all this poignantly clear. It takes the analysis of prison abolitionists, marxists, critical theorists (whilst doing some good revisions and critiques of some of these) onto the debt economy, algorithmic predictive policing, and the construction of the ‘Superpredator’ figure. The essay ‘Against Innocence’ is a classic by now and I had read it years ago online so was refreshing to reread it again. There was also a transcript of a performance piece about Robocop that can be viewed on youtube—the final chapter which is a series of poems/imaginary conversations with dead and living imprisoned people/revolutionaries that brim in optimism and fervour, left me feeling so inspired to tear shit down & bloom & live against the state & systems that kill us. All very good, ofc things don’t stop & since this was written in 2017 world has been changing but it’s still relevant.
mmillerb's review against another edition
5.0
writing this just to boost. seriously killer book y’all
monat2's review against another edition
5.0
an utterly brilliant, insightful, and thoroughly-researched collection of essays
emloueez's review against another edition
4.0
Really excellent overall. Definitely written for someone who knows a little bit about prison abolition and leftist (especially Marxist) theory already, (i.e no one who is gonna be shocked that incarceration and capitalism are both bad), but Wang thoroughly presents arguments that are well-situated in academia and that definitely enlighten how capitalism and the carceral state are mutually constitutive, especially in her discussions of PredPol, predatory municipal finance structures in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, and the category of "juvenile delinquent." Some of the Marxist theory lost me, but alas, that is the struggle I've been living since starting Oberlin in 2014. If I have a complaint here, it's that she doesn't go far enough in her analyses. She offers a few tangible examples of some policies in action, but I could have used more. I liked the idea of the last chapter about the abolitionist imagination, but when she writes: "For some time I have been thinking about how to convey the message of police and prison abolition to you, but I know that as a poet, it is not my job to win you over with a persuasive argument, but to impart to you a vibrational experience that is capable of awakening your desire for another world" (319) it felt like sort of a cop-out (no pun intended) considering.....she is an academic, and she's been making arguments in the rest of the book. I would have liked to see her thoughts on what she considers our abolitionist alternative to prison.
frogwithlittlehammer's review against another edition
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.5
To paraphrase Fiona Apple, if you think abolition discourse is muddled butter then Jackie Wang is a hot knife of perspicuity.
I urge anyone to pick this up, as it does a brilliant job of explaining how the predatory expropriation of blacks (especially from the financial sector) perpetuates the public’s support of the carceral system by mythologizing narratives of young black men as super predators and unworthy victims. It’s uniquely intersectional, as the author crosses into the effect of algorithms, personal histories, the Occupy movement (like all works of semiotext(e) do without fail 🫶), media accounts, Afropessimism, cybernetics, and much much more, and explain how the carceral state is implicated in all of it.
p.s. shoutout to that cute guy in the billiards hall who complimented my semiotext(e) shirt and I pulled out my book and we bonded but for what because he didn’t ask for my number but maybe because I was there with a boy already ╮(︶︿︶)╭
p.s. shoutout to that cute guy in the billiards hall who complimented my semiotext(e) shirt and I pulled out my book and we bonded but for what because he didn’t ask for my number but maybe because I was there with a boy already ╮(︶︿︶)╭
heidi_'s review against another edition
5.0
Rarely have I read such a lucid concentration of critiques against the carceral system and all in its web. Wang addresses the subject from a range of perspectives, teasing out every insidious justification used to mask the antiblack racism which lies at the core of mass incarceration. The myriad forms of dehumanization linked to prison and policing systems operate in tandem with the dynamics of late capitalism — they can be truly challenged only in the context of abolition. Bandaid solutions are meaningless when they are applied to a gaping wound that grows larger by the day.
"[T]he parasitic state and predatory credit system must keep people alive in order to extract from them, in [confinement and gratuitous violence] it must kill to maintain the current racial order... black racialization, then, is the mark that renders subjects suitable for — on the one hand — hyper-exploitation and expropriation, and, on the other hand, annihilation."
With direct, unassuming prose, she targets overlapping players in the game: the extortion behind the credit system which renders so many perpetually indebted, the politics of innocence and safety as they protect white civil society, the systemic biases coded into algorithmic policing, and the baseless moralizing which disguises racist and sexist legacies under individual shortcomings.
"[T]he prison itself is a problem for thought that can only be unthought using a mode of thinking that does not capitulate to the realism of the present."
Let this account serve as a clarion call to speak out against all who conspire to perpetuate this cruelty. Ourselves included.
"[T]he parasitic state and predatory credit system must keep people alive in order to extract from them, in [confinement and gratuitous violence] it must kill to maintain the current racial order... black racialization, then, is the mark that renders subjects suitable for — on the one hand — hyper-exploitation and expropriation, and, on the other hand, annihilation."
With direct, unassuming prose, she targets overlapping players in the game: the extortion behind the credit system which renders so many perpetually indebted, the politics of innocence and safety as they protect white civil society, the systemic biases coded into algorithmic policing, and the baseless moralizing which disguises racist and sexist legacies under individual shortcomings.
"[T]he prison itself is a problem for thought that can only be unthought using a mode of thinking that does not capitulate to the realism of the present."
Let this account serve as a clarion call to speak out against all who conspire to perpetuate this cruelty. Ourselves included.