In Scales of Captivity, Mary Pat Brady traces the figure of the captive or cast-off child in Latinx and Chicanx literature and art between chattel slavery’s final years and the mass deportations of the twenty-first century. She shows how Latinx expressive practices expose how every rescaling of economic and military power requires new modalities of capture, new ways to bracket and hedge life. Through readings of novels by Helena María Viramontes, Oscar Casares, Lorraine López, Maceo Montoya, Reyna Grande, Daniel Peña, and others, Brady illustrates how submerged captivities reveal the way mechanisms of constraint such as deportability ground institutional forms of carceral modernity and how such practices scale relations by naturalizing the logic of scalar hierarchies underpinning racial capitalism. By showing how representations of the captive child critique the entrenched logic undergirding colonial power, Brady challenges racialized modes of citizenship while offering visions for living beyond borders.

"“With its equally lyrical and incisive political commentary, Scales of Captivity rigorously explores how the (re)production of the US settler colonial racial state depends upon both a monopoly on violence and a monopoly on movement. It makes a crucial, timely, and pathbreaking intervention into literary and cultural studies, immigration studies, political geography, and ethnic, gender, and sexuality studies.”" - On Site, In Sound: Performance Geographies in América Latina

"“Mary Pat Brady has written a multilayered, bracing study with deep historical roots and startling contemporary resonance. She reanimates questions of citizenship and exclusion at the heart of Chicanx/Latinx studies, while simultaneously uncovering the inextricability of childhood, queer politics, and acts of witnessing. Brilliantly argued and compellingly written, this stellar work is the guidebook we desperately need to make sense of endlessly shifting borders and boundaries.”" - Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics

"“As ambitious as it is thorough, Scales of Captivity scours over 150 years of philosophical, political, and literary history, supplying the reader with fascinating and pertinent insights into the creation and maintenance of the complex racial/social hierarchies that currently exist throughout the US-Mexican border complex. . . . The counter-theories that Brady offers to combat these systems of oppression are even more provocative, making it a must read for anyone seriously interested in border issues.”" - Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

"Scholars of western American literature will find in Scales of Captivity a historically aware sketch of 175 years of the central role of capture in building Spanish/Mexican/US sovereignty in the West, as well as nuanced close readings of a broad selection of Latine cultural production situated in the region—which, Brady’s analyses remind us, has always been many regions." - Western American Literature

"“Scales of Captivity elucidates the material, metaphorical, ideological, and epistemological ramifications of scale through Latinx literature.”" - Studies in the Novel

"“Brady’s work offers generative and robust dialogue on the ongoing project of US empire, scalar logic, and capitalist expansion with which Latinx writers continue to grapple.”" - Latino Studies

"Mary Pat Brady’s gorgeously written new book is resonant and timely for considering and challenging unfreedoms in Latinx studies." - Chasqui