Acknowledgments

This book has been many years in the making. The research and writing for it took me across the original territories of Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Chippewa, Huron-Wendat, Kanien’kehà:ka, Patwin, Nisenan, Ohlone, Narragansett, Mashpee, Nauset, Nantucket, Pennacook, Pokanoket, Pocasset, and Seaconke nations. I am incredibly grateful to the artists whose work I write about in these pages. Thanks in particular to Jin-me Yoon, Ali Kazimi, Sunny Lee, and V. T. Nayani for sharing your work with me.

It has been wonderful to work with the University of Minnesota Press. Hats off to Leah Pennywark for her expert guidance and support, and to the editorial board and two anonymous reviewers for their enthusiastic support and generative feedback. Thanks to Anne Carter, Shelby Connelly, Wendy Holdman, Rachel Moeller, and to all of the UMP staff working behind the scenes. I am grateful to Eric Lundgren at the Press and to Michael Ladisch at the University of California, Davis, library for supporting the open access publication of Settler Attachments.

Though part of the violence of academic knowledge production is that it requires us to excise or portion off some parts of ourselves from others, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the imprint of the many communities that made me. I grew up in a large extended family— embedded in one of Toronto’s Shia Ithna Asheri communities—surrounded by grandparents, aunties, uncles, and first, second, and third cousins. Those religious and cultural contexts are often difficult to convey and impossible to reproduce in my adult life. Though politically oriented in very different ways from how I am now, that community and set of relations has indelibly influenced who I am as a thinker and has shaped my sense of what it means to make worlds in community. I also came of age in Toronto’s abundant activist, feminist / queer of color spaces, where I again saw the potential and pitfalls of community—and where I witnessed and experienced in action the challenges with taking seriously working, living, and loving on Indigenous land. Hearts out to the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, the Asian Arts Freedom School, Glad Day Bookshop, the PIRGs, and Centers for Women and Trans People at York University and University of Toronto, to the No More Silence organizers who convene the February 14 vigil every year, and so many others for the love and life you create. Across all of my Toronto communities, coming to terms with all of the entanglements of care and violence that being in relation entails has been a crucial skill that has guided me through this book.

Many people have nurtured and sustained me over the years. I give thanks to Rehana, Amir Saulat, Gul Joya, Amen, Trevor, Saide, Hsiang-Lin, Maya, Aylan, Laith, Laura, Sheela, Max, Karen, Lin W., and Sharmila.

Although this book looks nothing like my doctoral dissertation, its early seeds were planted in grad school, and before that, in undergrad days. Thanks to the many faculty, staff, colleagues, and friends across York and the University of Toronto who helped me navigate the hot mess that is higher education: Bobby Noble, Sheila Cavanagh, Allyson Mitchell, Rathiba Hadj-Moussa, Radhika Mongia, Andil Gosine, Eve Haque, Carmela Murdocca, Meg Luxton, David Murray, CUPE 3903, Silvia McCormack, Lindsey Gonder, Sue Sbrizzi, Alissa Trotz, Ellie Perkins, Deborah Barndt, Enakshi Dua, Celia Haig-Brown, Abbie Bakan, Rai Reece, Amar Wahab, Emily Rosser, Shihoko Nakagawa, Nadia Kanani, Preethy Sivakumar, Emily Merson, Pauline Hwang, and Jessica Chandrashekhar. Usamah Ansari convinced me that academia was worth sticking through, and Elleni Centime Zeleke’s lessons in ferocity were invaluable. Laura Kwak keeps me grounded in all the best ways.

My work on this book took place across four different institutions. At University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Viviane Saleh-Hanna and Eric Larson went above and beyond in welcoming me into their Providence community and to the Crime and Justice Studies Department. I miss our carpool! Thanks too to Shakhnoza Kayumova, Andri Foiles Sifuentes, Heather Turcotte, Tammi Arford, Tryon Woods, Susan Krumholz, and Ida Almeida for helping me transition into my first full-time academic job.

At Dickinson College, colleagues across the American Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies departments, across campus, and in Carlisle were kind and generous. Thanks in particular to Katie Oliviero for your mentorship, and to Eric Vázquez, Sheela Jane Menon, John Fournie, Helene Lee, Stacey Moultry, Claire Seiler, Ebru Kongar, Mark Andrew Price, Amy Farrell, Megan Yost, Donna Bickford, Denise McCauley, and Nikki Dragone.

To my many Concordia University/Montreal colleagues and friends, in film studies and beyond—including Masha Salazkina, Luca Caminati, Joshua Neves, Ishita Tiwary, May Chew, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Yumna Siddiqui, Nayrouz Abu-Hatoum, Anna Shah Hoque, Haidee Wasson, Marc Steinberg, Rosanna Maule, and Ria Rombough—thank you for making me feel at home. It was hard saying goodbye. I also had some terrific students at Concordia from whom I learned a lot. To name just a few: Anneka Jin, Max Holzberg, Lily Corne Klein, Mark Barber, and Matthias Mushinski, who also provided superb research assistance.

I am lucky to work with some equally fabulous colleagues at my current institution, UC Davis. Gratitude to my fellow faculty in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies: Corrie Decker, Chris Hanssmann, Julie Hua, Rana Jaleel, Ava Kim, Amina Mama, and Joanna Regulska. To Kayla Ware, Anna Grace Juline, Christopher Sconier-Flores, Kaitlin Dabdoub, Rodrigo Bonilla, Pamela Pretell, Katherine Ampaw-Mathei, Jeremiah Thompson, Christopher Greene, Rolando Pinedo, Kimberly Pearson, Sean Swift, Lisa Blackford, Evelyn Farias, Victoria Torres, Aklil Bekele, and so many more Hart Hall staff, past and present: thanks for all that you do. Across campus, I’m appreciative of colleagues past and present, including Elizabeth Miller, Kathryn Olmsted, Wendy Ho, Kalindi Vora, Elizabeth Freeman, Susan Kaiser, Maxine Craig, Sunaina Maira, Mark Jerng, Akua Banful, Alicia Rusoja, Javier Arbona, Susette Min, Kathleen Frederickson, Sal Nicolazzo, Desirée Martín, Lisa Materson, Alan Pelaez Lopez, Susy Zepeda, José Manuel Santillana Blanco, Julie Sze, Charlotte Biltekoff, Dawn Sumner, Jon Rossini, Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Milmon Harrison, Amy Motlagh, Benjamin Weber, Orly Clerge, Darnel Degand, Kathleen Whiteley, Emily Vázquez, Juan Diego Díaz, Kathleen Cruz, and Michael Singh. Thank you to Ryan Cartwright and Caren Kaplan for sharing your offices with me. My research and writing have been enriched by teaching and advising some amazing students at UCD. Shout outs to Caitlin Graziani, Kazumi Chin, Adan Garcia, Leila Easa, Sheyenne White, and Santana Guerra. Kimberly Nettles-Barcelon, Lorena Oropeza, and Thomas O’Donnell created critical spaces through the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspective on Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities for writing support and mentorship. Thank you to Elena K. Abbott for providing crucial support for writing and developing sections of the book during the PLACE and FOCUS Manuscript workshops. The Davis Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship and a Faculty Development Award likewise helped me push this book through to the finish line.

Audiences at interdisciplinary conferences like the American Studies Association, the Association for Asian American Studies, the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, the National Women’s Studies Association, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies asked critical questions that I needed to hear. Douglas Ishii, Alex Young, T. J. Tallie, Danielle Lorenz, Nishant Upadhyay, Aanchal Saraf, Swati Rana, Santhosh Chandrashekhar, Quynh Nhu Le, Rina Garcia Chua, and Heidi Amin-Hong organized the panels and roundtables where important conversations could take place. Thank you to Vanita Reddy, George Villanueva, and Nadia Kim for inviting me to share my work at Texas A&M University’s Asian American and Diaspora Studies Working Group. Thank you Jenn Fang and Frankie Huang for giving me space to write at Reappropriate, to Malinda Smith for inviting me to contribute to the Equity Matters blog series, and to Patrick Wolfe for editing a special issue of American Indian Culture and Research Journal where I began developing some of this book’s ideas long ago. I am grateful to Settler Colonial Studies for publishing an early version of chapter 3.

To Bruno Cornellier and Scott Morgensen, thank you for your support over the years. Juliana Hu Pegues, Michelle Raheja, and Lisa Tatonetti provided formidable expertise and mentorship as readers for a book manuscript workshop sponsored by UC Davis’s Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Department. Thank you Kat Whiteley and Adan Garcia for your assistance at the workshop. Through the Critical Ethnic Studies Association I am grateful to have worked with inspiring activist scholars like Juliann Anesi, Lee Ann Wang, Tiffany Lethabo King, Judy Rohrer, Ma Vang, Jessi Quizar, Ren-yo Hwang, Maile Arvin, and Christine Hong. Rob Carley, Laura Kwak, Eero Laine, SAJ, Chris Alen Sula, and Anne Donlon: you have been excellent collaborators. To Candace Fujikane, Josephine Faith Ong, and Katherine Achacoso, I am excited to build collectively with you.

I am forever grateful to Hsuan: thank you for sticking with me through thick and thin. We’ve been through it all. And I dedicate this book to Zayn, who invents wondrous new worlds every day.