Shah is a historian with expertise in North American and global struggles over public health, migration and incarceration from the mid-nineteenth through twenty-first centuries.
The book examines how the demonization of Chinese immigrants reverberated in policy, politics and cultural life of San Francisco residents and the United States.
Shah shows how Chinese Americans responded to health regulations and allegations with persuasive political speeches, lawsuits, boycotts, violent protests, and poems.
Erupting out of moments of democratic upheavals, hunger strikes unleash volatile personal and political power to upend prison regimes, governments and assumptions about gender, race and the body’s endurance.
Although varying in their ability to yield immediate results, Shah argues that hunger strike protests can propel far-reaching and unexpected effects across the globe and throughout history.