Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation
In these interconnected essays, Eli Clare vibrantly describes the “rednecks” and clearcuts he grew up among, the freak shows of the nineteenth century and transgender activists of today. Intelligence and wit illuminate his analysis of disability, child abuse, nature, pornography, sexuality, and class.
A frequently used text in classes ranging from Disability Studies to Queer Studies to Composition 101, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation is grounded a politics that insists upon complexity and multiplicity, examining identity politics and political agency in the face of systemic oppression and interpersonal abuse.
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How pleasurable it is to pick up a book that merely intrigues you because of its title and find that it is a gem well beyond its cover. This rare phenomenon happened when I came across Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride. Only a maestro of a writer can adroitly weave together her own story plus environmental, political, disability, and lesbian issues into a cohesive whole, coming out with such clarity that you find yourself identifying with many parts and muttering, ‘But of course.’ This thin volume is so thick with thought that you almost feel you have just devoured an oversized piece of key lime pie—indeed a rich treat to digest.
–-—Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women’s Studies Resources
The books that move us most are the ones that help us make sense of our experience, that take pieces of what we already know and put it together with new insights, new analysis, enabling us to form a fresh vision of ourselves and our lives. For me, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider and Adrienne Rich’s On Lies, Secrets, and Silence were such books, and there were significant others along the way. And now there’s Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride.
—-Suzanne Pharr, author of Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism
Eli Clare’s original work exploring the interstices between class, environmentalism, radical gender politics, and disability consciousness moves beyond the false compartmentalization that has characterized progressive politics in the nineties, and toward a viable radical politics for the twenty-first century.
—Ynestra King, co-editor of Dangerous Intersections
Eli Clare writes with the spirit of a poet and the toughness of a construction worker. The passion and skill of her writing will draw you inside a complex life and more deeply inside yourself.
—Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories
Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride is a call to awareness, an exhortation for each of us to examine our connection to and alienation from our environment, our sexuality, and each other.
-—Kenny Fries, author of Body, Remember: A Memoir and editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience From The Inside Out