Eng's work highlights racial inequalities within prisons, focusing on how Indigenous, Black, and other people of colour are affected by incarceration and its violence.
Prison Industrial Complex Explodes focuses on fighting the systemic exploitation and violence directed at marginalized communities while displaying their resilience and resistance.
In Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, Mercedes Eng explores the concept of archives as a central theme, examining how institutional records shape narratives of incarceration and identity.
Archives, traditionally understood as repositories of historical records, are depicted as powerful tools of surveillance and control within the prison system while at the same time can serve to showcase humanity within the context of familial history.
[13] Eng critiques the ways in which carceral records construct and often control histories of marginalized communities, aligning with scholarship that values the family archive’s role in defining public and private heritage.
[14] The book also intersects with discussions of personal and communal memory, emphasizing how state-maintained records can obscure or distort lived experiences.
This methodology aligns with broader archival theory, which questions how records serve as instruments of both memory and marginalization in societal power structures.
Through poetic engagement with these records, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes ultimately reframes archives as contested sites where personal histories clash with institutional narratives.