Racial Care

“James McMaster elegantly and bravely offers a trenchant and unyielding analysis of what he calls ‘racial care,’ which are the myriad ways by which vulnerable racialized subjects wade and work through their sufferings in an oppressive world in order to survive, sustain, and flourish. Laboring thoughtfully through artistic works in performance as well as in movement organizing, he exposes the complex and contradictory ways Asian Americans are located within the late capitalist and settler colonialist United States and how their care practices are vital to envisioning and molding alternative futures.” - Martin F. Manalansan IV, Rutgers University

“Rendered with elegant prose and written for an era of crisis born from histories of colonial and racial violence, James McMaster’s Racial Care offers necessary theorization of racial care’s many labors. Studying scenes of care that range from the aesthetic to the everyday, this gripping book invites us to consider how performances of care within Asian America can sustain racialized life through suffering while forging conditions for the realization of ‘mutual aid and mutual defense.’” - Joshua Chambers-Letson, author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life