Care Work ★★★★☆

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★☆

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a series of essays about disability justice.

I read this as an audiobook checked out from the library and read by the author.

Through these series of essays, Piepzna-Samarasinha talks about a variety of subject matters on the topic of disability justice often specifically for QTBIPOC people. First, they normalize writing in bed and contextualize what it’s like to be an artist and a creator with a disability. Next, they discuss the 10 principles of disability justice, including the importance of sustainability and collective access. Finally they touch on community care, calling out ablism, disability doulas, and suicide in disability, or crip, communities. We follow Piepzna-Samarasinha learning about the difficulties of traveling and the importance for people with disabilities to set boundaries when they’ve run out of spoons, or just don’t have the capacity to do more at that moment.

I learned so much from this book and it really has shown me that showing up for people with disabilities is a growing area for me that I want to improve on. I want to raise my awareness around access needs to better support people who are differently abled. It was inspiring to learn about all of the creative ways that people with disabilities show up for life. I also loved the strength and resilience that Piepzna-Samarasinha exudes in their writing.

If you liked Care Work, I also recommend The Purpose of Power by Alicia Garza, Until We Reckon by Danielle Sered, Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall, and Our Time is Now by Stacey Abrams.

This book helped show me that I need to step up my game reading books about people with disabilities, so two books I’m adding to my TBR are Disability Visibility Edited by Alice Wong and Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer. Do you have any other recommendations?

Happy reading -

Ms.Bjork