"Rarely have I been prouder to be from Minnesota and to call these writers my colleagues and neighbors than when reading this electric, disruptive, love-sharpened collection. I often say the revolution just may start in the Twin Cities: this book is my evidence of that possibility, proof of what happens when we love each other more than empire, when we are braver than the cowardly imagination of fascism." —Danez Smith, author of Bluff: Poems

"As we watched history unfold in bitter cold Minneapolis in the winter of 2025-26, I hoped that someone, many someones, were documenting the extraordinary valor and solidarity of the region’s residents against the lawless brutality of ICE. They were, and this book by many involved writers is their witness and analysis of what transpired, a chorus of voices telling us of principle and ruthlessness, kindness and cruelty, of whistles and food distribution networks, blizzards and patrols, fear and resolve in the face of terror." —Rebecca Solnit, author of The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change

"What happened in the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul in the winter of 2026 was as remarkable a story of nonviolent resistance as what happened on the sidewalks and bus stops of Montgomery in the winter of 1956 or on the beaches and salt mines of India in 1930. Like those stories it is still going on, and like those stories it deserves to be told by the myriad voices that bravely took part." —Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened

"What transpired in these frozen streets calls for exactly the kind of multifaceted telling these deeply intimate and powerfully political dispatches provide in American Occupation. Penned in the heat of a freezing winter, they offer a glimpse into the vortex of “courage and tenderness” (as contributor Dobby Gibson puts it) of a people united (and organized!) against racist state violence." —Ricardo Levins Morales, artist, author of The Land Knows the Way: Eco-Social Insights for Liberation

"This work is a necessary witness and deep reflection to a moment in Minnesota that we are all still trying to understand and integrate into our collective consciousness. I'm so grateful to each of the contributors in this collection for their honest, personal, and vulnerable explorations into this moment in history that has forever changed and shaped our communities. This book is an act of love." —Junauda Petrus, Minneapolis Poet Laureate, 2025-2026

"In these urgent dispatches from the struggle against disappearances and deportations, kidnappings and killings, the people of Minnesota acknowledge their fear but give us hope. Their crucial and inspiring lesson in the face of authoritarian state power is clear: stand in solidarity, love your neighbor, defend your community, and believe that the people, united, can never be defeated. Read this book and remind yourself of your own power." —Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other

"American Occupation takes us beyond the headlines to those on the frontlines of a war being waged now on all of us. Gathered here are essential voices sharing with us stories, ideas, and words that we need if we are to build, as Bao Phi puts it, the world worth fighting for. It is a call: read, feel, and act." —Jeff Chang, author of We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation