The first global history of hunger strikes as a tactic in prisons, conflicts, and protest movements. The power of the hunger strike lies in its utter simplicity. The ability to choose to forego eating is universally accessible, even to those living under conditions of maximal constraint, as in the prisons of apartheid South Africa, Israeli prisons for Palestinian prisoners, and the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. It is a weapon of the weak, potentially open to all. By choosing to hunger strike, a prisoner wields a last-resort personal power that communicates viscerally, in a way that is undeniable-especially when broadcast over prison barricades through media and to movements outside. Refusal to Eat is the first book to compile a global history of this vital form of modern protest, the hunger strike. In this enormously ambitious but concise book, Nayan Shah observes how hunger striking stretches and recasts to turn a personal agony into a collective social agony in conflicts and contexts all around the world, laying out a remarkable number of case studies over the last century and more. From suffragettes in Britain and the US in the early twentieth century to Irish political prisoners, Bengali prisoners, and detainees at post-9/11 Guantanamo Bay; from Japanese Americans in US internment camps to conscientious objectors in the 1960s; from South Africans fighting apartheid to asylum seekers in Australia and Papua New Guinea, Shah shows the importance of context for each case and the interventions the protesters faced. The power that hunger striking unleashes is volatile, unmooring all previous resolves, certainties, and structures and forcing supporters and opponents alike to respond in new ways. It can upend prison regimens, medical ethics, power hierarchies, governments, and assumptions about gender, race, and the body's endurance. This book takes hunger strikers seriously as decision-makers in desperate situations, often bound to disagree or fail, and captures the continued frustration of authorities when confronted by prisoners willing to die for their positions. Above all, Refusal to Eat revolves around a core of moral, practical, and political questions that hunger strikers raise, investigating what it takes to resist and oppose state power.

In exploring an array of intimacies between strangers, this book reveals how human relationships, dignity, and collaborations are experienced among global migrants. Nayan Shah takes a novel approach by examining both the legal histories of hundreds of interracial marriages involving South Asians and the countless court cases documenting illicit sexual contact between South Asian men and white, Chinese, and Native American men. Shah illuminates a stunning, transient world of heterogeneous social relations. At the same time, he demonstrates how the United States and Canada, in collusion with each other, actively sought to exclude and dispossess nonwhite "races." "Stranger Intimacy" reveals the intersections between capitalism, the state's treatment of immigrants, sexual citizenship, and racism in the first half of the twentieth century.

In exploring an array of intimacies between strangers, this book reveals how human relationships, dignity, and collaborations are experienced among global migrants. Nayan Shah takes a novel approach by examining both the legal histories of hundreds of interracial marriages involving South Asians and the countless court cases documenting illicit sexual contact between South Asian men and white, Chinese, and Native American men. Shah illuminates a stunning, transient world of heterogeneous social relations. At the same time, he demonstrates how the United States and Canada, in collusion with each other, actively sought to exclude and dispossess nonwhite "races." "Stranger Intimacy" reveals the intersections between capitalism, the state's treatment of immigrants, sexual citizenship, and racism in the first half of the twentieth century.

"Contagious Divides" charts the dynamic transformation of representations of Chinese immigrants from medical menace in the nineteenth century to model citizen in the mid-twentieth century. Examining the cultural politics of public health and Chinese immigration in San Francisco, this book looks at the history of racial formation in the U.S. by focusing on the development of public health bureaucracies.
Nayan Shah notes how the production of Chinese difference and white, heterosexual norms in public health policy affected social lives, politics, and cultural expression. Public health authorities depicted Chinese immigrants as filthy and diseased, as the carriers of such incurable afflictions as smallpox, syphilis, and bubonic plague. This resulted in the vociferous enforcement of sanitary regulations on the Chinese community. But the authorities did more than demon-ize the Chinese; they also marshaled civic resources that promoted sewer construction, vaccination programs, and public health management.
Shah shows how Chinese Americans responded to health regulations and allegations with persuasive political speeches, lawsuits, boycotts, violent protests, and poems. Chinese American activists drew upon public health strategies in their advocacy for health services and public housing. Adroitly employing discourses of race and health, these activists argued that Chinese Americans were worthy and deserving of sharing in the resources of American society.