Character Work by Paul Susi
Character Work by Paul Susi
**Pre-orders of Character Work will ship as soon as copies arrive from the printer. The pre-order sale ends October 15, 2025.
Nearly two decades into his theatrical career, Paul Susi is cast as Chee Gong, a Chinese immigrant executed in 1889 for a crime he did not commit and buried in an unmarked grave in Susi’s hometown of Portland, Oregon. This role sets off a meditation on cultural erasure and how the act of “forgetting” can be both a survival mechanism and a trap. But the heart of Character Work takes place offstage: Susi has spent many years managing shelters for unhoused people, and out of that work grew his mutual aid project, PDX ID Assistance, a radical effort that literally gives people back their identities. His book is at once a memoir, a manifesto, and a startlingly honest account of what compassion can look like.
Paperback: 160 pages
ISBN: 978-1-960200-02-0
Publication date: October 28, 2025
Dimensions: 5 x 0.415 x 7.75 inches
Author photo: Yaara Perczek
Cover design: Aaron Robert Miller
About the author:
Paul Susi is a writer, a theater artist, a social services professional, an educator, and an activist, born and raised in Portland. He is the peer resource navigator for Portland Street Medicine, a conversation project facilitator for Oregon Humanities, and the vendor program director for Street Roots. PDX ID Assistance events are posted at www.paulsusi.wordpress.com.
Praise for Character Work:
“Character Work pulses with quiet yet devastating fury. This book, written by someone who has done so much good in our community for so many years, is an incisive, honest dissection of the many ways we have failed in our basic obligation to care for one another, to give a damn. From maddening bureaucratic hurdles to societal obliviousness to run-of-the-mill NIMBYism, Paul Susi writes from a place of deep experience, concern, and rage. A beautifully written book, as illuminating about the curative nature of art as it is about the destructive nature of commerce. “
—Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“Character Work is a no-bullshit masterpiece, extraordinary on the level of the line and in its intimate and panoramic capture of people living outside and on the margins. With wry humor, love, and the clear-eyed rage that names injustice, Paul Susi illuminates the holes in our public histories and the bureaucratic labyrinths that swallow real people every day. Brilliant, provocative, joyful, and unforgettable, Character Work instantly became one of my favorite books, and I cannot wait to give it to everyone I know.”
—Karen Russell, author of The Antidote
“When we see injustice, our fellow humans suffering, we are tempted to say, ‘But what can I do? They are so many and I am only one.’ This book shows how, with character, I and they become all of us.”
—Kim Stafford, author of 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared