Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation

In this beautifully written and powerful hybrid text, Clare blends memoir, history, theory, and cultural analysis that embodies and reflects the queer intersectionality of his lived experience. Clare poetically traces his own history, from his rural roots as a sexually abused young girl-who-never-quite-identified-as-a-girl to a college student/emergent lesbian who experienced urban life to the trans identity he now inhabits. Throughout this set of essays, Clare questions the terminology we use to claim membership in certain communities and perceptively examines the intersectional nature of all identities. Articulate, poignant, candid, and challenging, this text is unlike anything I’ve never read—the world needs more voices like Clare’s.

I've only read parts of this book, but one author stood out to me. Eli Clare has a great sense of humor in writing about discourses of disability and sexuality. He was able to open my eyes to a sexual minority that's rarely talked about in dominant society/culture in a very humorous, yet serious way. I highly suggest this book to anyone who wants to learn more about disability and sexuality. It helped me view disabled individuals as autonomous people who are entitled to exercising sexual agency.

Clare weaves personal experiences with politicalideologies--clarifying connecting issues and pointing out thesimilarities and challenges that we face in working through them. Thisbook struck me at emotional and mental levels and has left me with a great deal to think about. One excellent aspect is how to she explains that solutions may never be as simple as we want them to be, but taking the time to understand multiple stories and multiple levels of truth will help us to reach new heights of achievement and equality. I would also strongly recomment Pushing the Limits, ed by Shelley Tremain and Restricted Access, ed by Victoria Brownworth--both collections of works by a diverse group of queer women with disabilities.

Spoke to the need for self-advocacy. Sets the bar for understanding that disability does not mean inability.

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation Review of Eli Clare's Book by Julie Ann Racino Eli Clare's book represents one in a genre of literature in disability studies (e.g., Brown, 2014, autobiography), supported by the government, independent living, and university sectors on the life experiences and perspectives on community and world issues by "parents" (e.g., parent-professionals) and "people with disabilities" (e.g., now at the UN Convention on Persons with Disabilities, 2006). However, the expectation was that these groups (e.g., university sector) would be able to "use" this information to better quality life in the community through the avenues cited in the book such as personal assistance services (PAS) or her life as professionally constructed or thought about as "overcoming childhood abuse" (e.g., Garbarino & Eckenrode, 1997). Eli Clare's writing is superb, and she entwines an engaging story of environment in the context of jobs, and a world now becoming known in the world of dykes and women's "pro sex" and "anti-violence" feminism (some thought this was the women's movement, see, Women's Hall of Fame), and the remarkable influence of the independent living movement and its leaders on the creativity and perseverance in her life. She shines through!! Though I've never enjoyed being called part of the "straight world", I'm delighted with a playful sexuality, the movement of identity (e.g., identity politics) and resilience (represented in the literature), and feelings of pride instead of shame and isolation (p. 98). For my own work in public administration and disability, I agree that I recommend payment for independent living (i.e., cerebral palsy), support entrepreneurship, education and writing, and am delighted at the grassroots efforts to reform old-fashioned health care systems such as Medicaid for the community (Olson, 2010; Racino, 2014). I'd like to explore more the school systems that allowed a 30-year, apparent coverup of childhood abuse in its teacher credentialed systems, similar to what I found in 2005 at assault by teachers, and somehow exited as "mainstreaming" (e.g., Dr. Carol Berrigan and inclusion who is inspirational in university teacher preparation) in progress. Eli Clare is congratulated for her academic work with her professors in examining views through a qualitative research stance, understanding and illuminating the concepts of gender with our feminist professors (e.g., Dr. Rannveig Traustadottir), bringing through studies by Dr. Robert Bogdan in freaks (now more commonly crips, to queers and other "highly charged" and "ugly names", p.93), and shedding light, understanding and analysis on transgender, transsexual, and lesbianism in a totality (now to same sex marriage equality laws), and the pink triangle of the Holocaust camps (from the 1940s; my own visit in 1991 to the former Czechoslovakia). She wonders why "we" were not clearly taught about "old growth forest" as being essential in the context of the Nation's logging industry (See, Woodsmen's Fair in Booneville, New York, 2015) and environmentalism (and the replacement with the rural prison industrial complex)! Eli Clare in 1999 had her pulse on the major issues still to come with the environment now at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and global climate change and the environment as part of Sustainable, Inclusive and Equitable Cities and Communities! Thank you to the disability studies programs, including Steven J. Taylor, founder of the Syracuse University program, who authored amazon.com's Acts of Conscience, World War II, Mental Institutions and Religious Objectors (Taylor, 2009) through Syracuse University Press.

This book is beautifully written and could perhaps be used as the definition is intersectionality. I first read it ten years ago after hearing the author speak and keep returning to it, referring to it, buying it as a gift for important people in my life i know it will resonate with, and more.

Would recommend to everybody!! It is an amazing book and gives good perspective on disabilities!

Eli Clare's book is brilliant, poignant, controversial, pulls no punches, and will forcibly spread your mind open. I highly recommend it.