Joy and Pain – A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums

"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