17 for 2017: Chase Strangio recommends Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation

8. Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation by Eli Clare recommended by Chase Strangio

Throughout my tenure as the December Writer-In-Residence, I will be assembling a list of 17 must-read-books for 2017. To accomplish this numerically satisfying task, I have asked 17 people whose work I adore to suggest one title for the list. Consult the end of each post for the growing list of recommendations! 

I have never met Chase Strangio in person. However, when I am at dinner parties in New York, I am often asked if I am "Chase the Lawyer." My response: "No" is always quickly followed by "BUT I WISH." As a staff attorney at the ACLU, Strangio is situated at the forefront of various LGBT, HIV, and prison abolition-based legal initiatives. In addition to frequent contributions to the ACLU blog, Chase's writing can be found on Slate and Feministing. Most recently, Strangio has been advocating on behalf of Chelsea Manning. If there is one hyperlink to click on today that will inspire endless hope – and necessary action – for possible futures, it is Chase's letter to President Obama.

From Chase:

One book that I revisit regularly to push my analysis and deepen my connection to resistance is Eli Clare’s Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation. I am particularly drawn to this text as we face new threats to our liberation under a Trump-Pence administration. The mainstream trans movement so often turns towards the state for legitimization – just as other civil rights movements before us – and in so doing reinforces anti-disability, anti-Black, anti-immigrant impulses. Clare offers a beautiful, narrative counterpoint to such impulses. As Dean Spade notes in the afterword to the 2009 edition of Exile & Pride, Clare’s analysis “demands complexity and an account of the multi-vector and contingent natures of oppressions, identities, and struggles.” I highly recommend the book and everything Eli Clare writes.

Stay tuned as we build the ultimate 2017 reading list! A new suggestion from an inspired thinker emerges every-other-day for the month of December on open-book.ca.

17 for 2017:

1. Mariko Tamaki recommends The Land of Forgotten Girls

2. Sheila Heti recommends The Normal Personality: A New Way of Thinking about People

3. Vivek Shraya recommends The Mothers

4. Kate Bornstein recommends Siddhartha

5. Casey Mecija recommends Tropical Renditions: Making Musical Scenes in Filipino America

6. Morgan M. Page recommends Small Beauty

7. Lauren Berlant recommends Long Division and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America

December Writer-In-Residence

Chase Joynt is a filmmaker and writer. His latest two films Genderize and Between You and Me are now streaming live online with CBC Digital Docs. His first book, You Only Live Twice (co-authored with Mike Hoolboom) was published by Coach House Books and just named one of the Best Books of 2016 by The Globe and Mail and CBC. His second book The Case of Agnes (co-authored with Kristen Schilt) is forthcoming from Duke University Press.