New Review of Normal Life, Captive Genders and Criminal Intimacy
GLQ recently published a review of Nat Smith and Eric Stanley’s Captive Genders, Regina Kunzel’s Criminal Intimacy, and my book Normal Life. Thanks to Eli Vitulli for writing the review! You can read it here.
Lovers & Fighters in Polish, and the World Social Forum Free Palestine
I’m writing from Brazil, where I have traveled to attend the World Social Forum Free Palestine and specifically to participate in the Queer Visions gathering and public panels here focused on anti-pinkwashing work. The Queer Visions meetings were convened by the wonderful activists from Pinkwatching Israel who gathered 16 international activists doing anti-pinkwashing work in their own contexts. Here is a video from the Assembly that ended the Forum of anti-pinkwashers presenting a resolution. Below are some pictures from the march in Porto Alegre–the one with lots of purple is a feminist/women’s solidarity contingent that had beautiful quilted signs. I also wanted to share the sweet news that Wania and Ewe have translated my 2004 essay, For Lovers and Fighters, into Polish! You can grab it in Polish here.
New Video, Book Reviews and Recommended Reading
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of joining Laura Whitehorn in the Radical Book Tent at the Baltimore Book Festival, organized by the wonderful people at Red Emma’s.
In other news, I’ve added a bunch of reviews of Normal Life to the writing page on this site, in case they interest you.
Also, I want to recommend an exciting new book, The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard. You can order a copy to be sent to a prisoner when you order your own on the Topside Press website. Please do!
Dean Spade and Laura Whitehorn on the Prison Industrial Complex
Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer
The new Against Equality book, Prisons Will Not Protect You, has been published! I wrote an introduction for it called “Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer” about why hate crime laws don’t help queer and trans people, but do build up a police state that targets us.
Learn more about the anthology from Against Equality.
Notes Toward Racial and Gender Justice Ally Practice in Legal Academia
I wrote “Notes Toward Racial and Gender Justice Ally Practice in Legal Academia,” in Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, Angela P. Harris, Carmen Gonzalez and Yolanda Niemann, and published by Utah University Press in 2012. You can read it here.
Queering Abolition
American Quarterly just published an conversation between me, Eric A. Stanley and the authors of Queer (In)Justice. You can download it here. Speaking of abolition, last week’s public forum about King County’s plans to pour a ton of money into rehabilitating our youth jail and the court buildings where kids of color get sentenced to jail and parents of color get their kids taken away was very contentious. I wrote something about what happened and why the forum should not have been shut down here.
In other news, Normal Life is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award! Some of the finalists in the Seattle region are reading together on April 25 at 7pm at Vermillion. Hope to see you there!
In the News: What’s Wrong with Gay Rights? Dean Spade Addresses the Problem in Normal Life
Interview: Toward a Critical Trans Politics
Toward a Critical Trans Politics: An Interview with Dean Spade by Rob Nichols, published in Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action, Number 14, 2012.