The committee is unanimous in its decision to award this year’s Robert K. Martin prize for best book published by a CAAS member in the previous calendar year to Refugee Lifeworlds: The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia by Dr. Y-Dang Troeung (Temple University Press). In her book, Troeung stages a carefully argued consideration of the transnational impact of the Cold War, specifically in relation to Cambodian refugees displaced by the consequences of American foreign policy. The committee was captivated by Troeung’s methodology, specifically by the innovative use of interdisciplinary methods and her approach to autoethnography, praising the masterful blending of family and personal reflections with critical engagements with a refugee archive. As one committee member observed, “This is one of the most beautiful and compelling works of literary scholarship that I have encountered and I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to sit with this text.”

The committee would like to award an Honorable Mention for this year’s Robert K. Martin prize for best book published by a CAAS member in the previous calendar year to Dr. Dennis Tyler’s Disabilities of the Color Line: Redressing Antiblackness from Slavery to the Present (NYU Press). Tyler’s book makes a unique contribution to the field, provocatively linking disability with racialized arguments about the capacity of African Americans to occupy or claim—particularly under slavery and its aftermath—a space that would imagine them as both free and whole. Drawing on African American writings and acts from slavery to Civil Rights, Tyler asks us to further consider how claiming disability in relation to racialized violences might function as a means of creating community.

With thanks to the Martin Prize Committee: Jennifer Harris, Kristin Moriah, and Carter Neal.