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A review by historicalmaterialgirl
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha has solidified herself as one of my favorite authors. She's so creative, realistic, hopeful and unpretentious in her writing.
I genuinely loved and felt so inspired by the way she discussed mutual aid and care webs as ways to actually practice and try collective care and gift economies. DJ could give us so much insight into non-capitalistic economies and culture-building! And she's so honest about these practices too, like yeah sometimes it sucks or fails or lasts for a month or your needs contradict with each other. I also loved so so much, really truly needed, to read what she says about survivorship and being "not over it, not fixed." Honestly one of the best essays to ever exist sorry about it! She also gave me better insight into what disability justice looks irl, as well as commentary on love, access, aging, spirituality and misogyny that I really appreciated.
I do diverge with some of what was written when we're talking about "femmephobia" and/or emotional labor. Call me old fashioned but girl that's just misogyny! And (emotionally) exhausting tasks/chores are not the same as labor the way communist writing has taught me to think of it. But I'm just annoying lmao this book was amazing go read it!!!!
I genuinely loved and felt so inspired by the way she discussed mutual aid and care webs as ways to actually practice and try collective care and gift economies. DJ could give us so much insight into non-capitalistic economies and culture-building! And she's so honest about these practices too, like yeah sometimes it sucks or fails or lasts for a month or your needs contradict with each other. I also loved so so much, really truly needed, to read what she says about survivorship and being "not over it, not fixed." Honestly one of the best essays to ever exist sorry about it! She also gave me better insight into what disability justice looks irl, as well as commentary on love, access, aging, spirituality and misogyny that I really appreciated.
I do diverge with some of what was written when we're talking about "femmephobia" and/or emotional labor. Call me old fashioned but girl that's just misogyny! And (emotionally) exhausting tasks/chores are not the same as labor the way communist writing has taught me to think of it. But I'm just annoying lmao this book was amazing go read it!!!!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism
Minor: Violence