American Precariat

Parables of Exclusion

Zeke Caligiuri et al.

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781566896962
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

Fifteen essays coedited by a collective of award-winning incarcerated writers, featuring contributions from Lacy M. Johnson, Kiese Laymon, Valeria Luiselli, Kao Kalia Yang, and more, with a foreword by Zeke Caligiuri and an introduction by Eula Biss. "This is a volume edited by the imprisoned, because the history of class has always been written by the powerful."This groundbreaking anthology of essays edited by incarcerated writers takes a sharp look at the complexity and fluidity of class and caste systems in the United States. Featuring accounts that include gig work as a delivery driver, homelessness among trans youth, and life with immense student loan debt, in addition to transcripts of insightful discussions between the editors, American Precariat demonstrates how various and often invisible extreme instability can be. With the understanding that widespread recognition of collective precarity is an urgent concern, the anthology situates each individual portrait within societal structures of exclusion, scarcity, and criminality.These essays write through the silence around class to enumerate the risks that our material conditions leave us no choice but to take. A rendering of the present moment told from below, American Precariat shares stories of the unseen and the unspoken and articulates the lines of our division. In doing so, it offers healing for some of the world's fractures.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Zeke Caligiuri—Foreword
• Eula Biss—Introduction
• Jennifer Bowen—A Note on Conversations
• Michael Torres—Piñatas
• Alice Paige—A GenderPunk Love Letter
• Inara Verzemnieks—The Last Days of the Baldock
• Sarith Peou—The Promised Land
• Anonymous—For a Solidarity of Condition and Position: A Report from a Delivery Driver in Manhattan
• Kristin Collier—Debt Demands a Body
• Angela Pelster—Saskatoons
• Lauren Markham—Can We Move Our Forests in Time to Save Them?
• Lacy M. Johnson—Shape of the Wound
• Steve Almond—The View from Mount Failure
• Tm “Redd” Warren—There Are No Bars in Rush City
• Kao Kalia Yang—Kuv Niam Zoo Nkauj: My Mother Is Beautiful
• Kiese Laymon—How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance
• Valeria Luiselli—Tell Me How It Ends
• Acknowledgments
• Back Cover