Ink is focalized through four characters-one ink and three non-inks-who each have distinct knowledge of and experience with the violence and suffering caused by these policies. The familiarity of these entities, along with the initial responses of detachment from 'non-ink' characters towards the sufferings of their 'ink' counterparts, emphasize the commonalities between the United States of the storyworld and that of the reader's own world to underscore how this fictionalized violence is heavily steeped in reality. In her writing, Vourvoulias troubles the normalization of state-sanctioned violence and exploitation in the United States by taking familiar entities that exist in the reader's own world-in particular, border patrol, private prisons, migrant detention centers, and the foster care system-and representing them candidly in her novel as part of a network that perpetuates these acts against immigrants.

In the storyworld of Ink, immigrants and their children are required to be explicit about their immigration status by bearing a tattoo on their wrists-a biometric barcode that can be scanned and monitored by government personnel at random to determine where they are allowed to go, where they may reside, and the kinds of surveillance that they will be subjected to. Sabrina Vourvoulias' Ink holds a mirror to the United States' record of exploiting and harming Mexican and Central American immigrants by documenting the events that occur within a slightly altered version of the nation, one that has graduated to using an 'inking' system to track immigrants' whereabouts.

Ink sabrina vourvoulias pdf