With IPS’ Break the Chain Campaign prominently featured in the book, Life Interrupted: Trafficking Into Forced Labor In The United States introduces us to survivors of human trafficking who are struggling to get by and make homes for themselves in the United States. Having spent nearly a decade following the lives of formerly trafficked men and women, author Denise Brennan recounts in close detail their flight from their abusers and their courageous efforts to rebuild their lives. At once scholarly and accessible, her book links these firsthand accounts to global economic inequities and under-regulated and unprotected workplaces that routinely exploit migrant laborers in the United States.

IPS’ Break The Chain Campaign, Duke University Press, Teaching for Change Bookstore, and Busboys and Poets will host Brennan to share her contention that today’s punitive immigration policies undermine efforts to fight trafficking. While many believe trafficking happens only in the sex trade, Brennan shows that across low-wage labor sectors—in fields, in factories, and on construction sites—widespread exploitation can lead to and conceal forced labor. Life Interrupted is a riveting account of life in and after trafficking and a forceful call for meaningful immigration and labor reform.

Denise Brennan is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Georgetown University. She is the author of What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic, also published by Duke University Press.

Other co-sponsors are Freedom Network, Solidarity Center, and Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center.