Post-Secondary Library

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

Full Title

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

Author(s)

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Year of Publication

2018

Media Type

Book

Usefulness to Educators

Is teaching care work? How might things change if we thought of it as such? Many view education as a tool for social justice. What happens if we consciously approach education as tool for community health and interconnection? This book isn’t specifically about either education or digital accessibility but it is a raw, evocative work that dives into lived experiences of care and support within (and without) the disability community. It’s relevance here is as a foundational text on Disability Justice, and on the inherent messiness of accessibility work.

Premise

“Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centres the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. ” Arsenal Pulp Press

Purpose

  • “Leah writes passionately and personally about creating spaces by and for sick and disabled queer people of colour, and creative “collective access” — access not as a chore but as a collective responsibility and pleasure — in our communities and political movements. ” Arsenal Pulp Press
  • Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of colour are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a toolkit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient, sustainable communities of liberation where no one is left behind. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.” Arsenal Pulp Press

Research Methods

Personal essay combined with micro-anthologies of disability justice activists and thinkers.

Conceptual or Theoretical Frameworks

    • Critical Disability Justice

    • Disability Studies

Reference with Published Abstract (when available)

Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care work: dreaming disability justice. Arsenal Pulp Press.

Points of Connection

As a disabled queer woman, who read this book from bed in the early days of living with disability, I wept over the contributions to literature, performance, advocacy and the care of others that so many disabled queer, trans, Black, and Indigenous people of colour made from their beds. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha puts so much care into their writing and acknowledgements.

Points of Contention

NA

Findings

NA

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