Around the globe, people are faced with spiraling crises, from the pandemic and climate change-induced disasters to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, genocide, racist policing, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. More and more of us feel mobilized to fight back, often dedicating our lives to collective liberation.
But even those of us who long for change seem to have trouble when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Too often we think of our political values as outward-facing positions again dominant systems of power. Many projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying desperately to live out the cultural myths about dating and relationships that we are fed from an early age.
How do we divest from cultural programming that gives us harmful expectations about sex, dating, romance and friendship? How do we recover from the messed up dynamics we were trained in by childhood caregivers? How do we bring our best thinking about freedom into step with our desires for healing and connection?
Love in a F*cked-Up World is a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, so we can stick together while we work for survival and liberation.
Pre-order through Bluestockings and get 15% off with the code F*CKED<3.
Published October 2020, by Verso Press. Mutual Aid is forthcoming from various publishers in Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, German, Czech, Italian and Korean.
Check out the free
Teaching Guide that goes with the book, and this free
Study Guide created by Radical in Progress.
Read this draft of a
Spanish translation now and look forward to the book coming out in Spanish, Italian, Czech, and Thai in the coming months. Here is a translation of the
Leadership Qualities chart from the book in Spanish, and here is a translation of the chart about
Qualities of Mutual Aid Projects in Spanish. These were made by
@multiversidadlibertaria.
Watch the
launch event video where I was in conversation with Whitney Hu,
this conversation with Mariame Kaba and Ejeris Dixon, and
this one with Mia Mingus.
Read this
excerpt that was published by Truthout in October, this other
excerpt published in Roar Magazine in November, this
interview about the book with In These Times, and this
interview with The Nation. Read this
review by Rori Elliot, and this
review by Paul Centorame.
Normal Life
Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law by Dean Spade was first published in 2011 by South End Press. A second edition with new material was published in 2015 by Duke University Press.
Normal Life was published
in Spanish by
Bellaterra Press in 2016. (Read Chapter 2, “What’s Wrong with Rights?” in Mandarin here:
「權利」有什麼問題？)
Read more about Normal Life.
Anthologies and Book Chapters
Queer Politics and Anti-Blackness, co-authored with Morgan Bassichis, in
Queer Necropolitics, edited by Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman and Silvia Posocco, (2014).
Too Queer to Be Square, in
After Homosexual: The Legacies of Gay Liberation, edited by Carolyn D’Cruz and Mark Pendleton, (2014).
Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer, in Prisons Will Not Protect You (ed. Ryan Conrad) (AK Press 2012),
Spanish translation by Morgan Ztardust.
Building an Abolitionist Trans & Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got, in Captive Genders (ed. Eric Stanley and Nat Smith) (AK Press, 2011), (co-authored with Morgan Bassichis and Alex Lee) (Mandarin translation available here:
全力打造一個以廢除為目標的跨性／酷兒運動).
Afterword, Exile and Pride by Eli Clare, 15th Anniversary Edition (2009).
Methodologies of Trans Resistance, in Blackwell Companion to LGBT/Q Studies (2007).
For Lovers and Fighters, in We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists, ed. Melody Berger (2006). (Polish translation of this essay
here. Spanish translation
here.)
Compliance is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy, in Transgender Rights: History, Politics and Law, eds. Paisley Currah, Shannon Minter, Richard Juang, (2006).
Compliance is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy, in Transgender Rights: History, Politics and Law, eds. Paisley Currah, Shannon Minter, Richard Juang, (2006).
Fighting to Win, in That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, ed. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, (2004).
Once More . . . with Feeling, in Inside Out: FTM and Beyond, ed. Morty Diamond, (2004).
My Memory and My Witness, in Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, ed. Michelle Tea, (2004) (co-authored with Elisabeth Goldschmidt).
Around the globe, people are faced with spiraling crises, from the pandemic and climate change-induced disasters to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, genocide, racist policing, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. More and more of us feel mobilized to fight back, often dedicating our lives to collective liberation.
But even those of us who long for change seem to have trouble when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Too often we think of our political values as outward-facing positions again dominant systems of power. Many projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying desperately to live out the cultural myths about dating and relationships that we are fed from an early age.
How do we divest from cultural programming that gives us harmful expectations about sex, dating, romance and friendship? How do we recover from the messed up dynamics we were trained in by childhood caregivers? How do we bring our best thinking about freedom into step with our desires for healing and connection?
Love in a F*cked-Up World is a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, so we can stick together while we work for survival and liberation.
Pre-order through Bluestockings and get 15% off with the code F*CKED<3.