"Postcolonial Grief offers a promising glimpse into what it might look like to pursue comparative or relational area studies through an anticolonial orientation." — Emily Mitchell-Eaton, Society & Space
"Postcolonial Grief powerfully uncovers overlapping histories of violence across the Pacific and carefully considers the relationship between grief, silencing, and reconciliation. Kim convincingly demonstrates the way that melancholia and loss constitute powerful forces in the Pacific as wounds that refuse to heal yet open up new (im)possibilities for relating to violence outside of liberal humanist frameworks of reconciliation. Postcolonial Grief is thus invaluable for those interested in affect studies, settler colonial studies, cultural studies, communication, and Asian-American history." — Corinne Mitsuye Sugino, Lateral
"On the whole, Kim’s book sharply fulfills the promise of decolonising the Pacific begun in the critical and scholarly insurgency of the 1970s. The communication between writing and loss remains central here, as it was for Albert Wendt. Postcolonial Grief makes an important theoretical contribution to these conversations and I recommend it to readers interested in critical ethnic studies, Asian American Studies, and decolonizing methods of reading." — Aaron Nyerges, Cultural Studies Review
“The book is a powerful exploration of how unmourned and unresolved deaths across the transpacific haunt the present, offering possibilities for political transformations. Analyzing the ghostly and capturing them into words is a challenging academic endeavor, which this book accomplishes robustly, making interventions across diasporic studies, critical race theories, feminist studies, cultural studies, and Asian American studies and Latinx studies.” — Hayana Kim, Situations
“This tour de force exhumes the ghosts of the American Century built on the ruins of Japanese imperialism. Postcolonial Grief powerfully names the repetition compulsion of producing an Asian figure who must be continually rescued and destroyed, leaving postwar violence and loss in the transpacific unmourned. Jinah Kim's bold and illuminating study asks us to confront the painful political fact that decolonization in the transpacific is yet to come.” — David L. Eng, coauthor of Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans
“Guided by a longue durée analysis of multiple settler colonialisms, Postcolonial Grief is a highly original, timely, and welcome project that takes seriously the transpacific turn in comparative ethnic studies, critical race studies, and Asian American studies. This provocative book will undoubtedly have a great impact on the ways that scholars view war, memory, grieving, and empire.” — Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, author of War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work
“This tour de force exhumes the ghosts of the American Century built on the ruins of Japanese imperialism. Postcolonial Grief powerfully names the repetition compulsion of producing an Asian figure who must be continually rescued and destroyed, leaving postwar violence and loss in the transpacific unmourned. Jinah Kim's bold and illuminating study asks us to confront the painful political fact that decolonization in the transpacific is yet to come.” — David L. Eng, coauthor of Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans
“Guided by a longue durée analysis of multiple settler colonialisms, Postcolonial Grief is a highly original, timely, and welcome project that takes seriously the transpacific turn in comparative ethnic studies, critical race studies, and Asian American studies. This provocative book will undoubtedly have a great impact on the ways that scholars view war, memory, grieving, and empire.” — Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, author of War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work