Review of Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas by Jinah Kim (Duke University Press)

Pulpolux !!! Courtesy of _MG_8415 (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Jinah Kim’s Postcolonial Grief engages with the transnational politics of grief, mourning, and militarization across the Pacific. By examining literature and film produced by Japanese and Korean persons across the Asian diaspora, Kim reveals the ways in which loss and melancholia act as insurgent cultural forces. She considers how, despite silencing mechanisms which valorize narratives of reconciliation and pathologize the grief of colonized subjects, colonialism continues to haunt the present. A rich engagement with the overlapping histories of violence across the Pacific, Kim effectively and carefully considers the relationship between liberal narratives of reconciliation, loss, and colonial violence.