Assembly Line Sculpture

After reading these poems, you may never look at your cell phone in quite the same way again. Xu Lizhi was a young poet working on an assembly line at a Foxconn factory in China, one of the largest manufacturers of Apple and other electronic devices. Unable to afford university and after multiple unsuccessful attempts to get a job elsewhere, he took his life at the age of 24. His haunting poems describe the suffering, dehumanization, and harsh conditions at such factories, conditions that our sleek shiny devices obscure. After his death, Xu Lizhi's story was picked up by major media around the world, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit, and Time. Most of Xu Lizhi's poems have not been available in English — until now. This book is a searing indictment of globalization, capitalism, labor relations, and the dark underside of technology development and manufacturing.