One book that I revisit regularly to push my analysis and deepen my connection to resistance is Eli Clare’s Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation. If there is one hyperlink to click on today that will inspire endless hope – and necessary action – for possible futures, it is Chase's letter to President Obama. Most recently, Strangio has been advocating on behalf of Chelsea Manning.

In addition to frequent contributions to the ACLU blog, Chase's writing can be found on Slate and Feministing. However, when I am at dinner parties in New York, I am often asked if I am 'Chase the Lawyer.' My response: 'No' is always quickly followed by 'BUT I WISH.' As a staff attorney at the ACLU, Strangio is situated at the forefront of various LGBT, HIV, and prison abolition-based legal initiatives. I have never met Chase Strangio in person. To accomplish this numerically satisfying task, I have asked 17 people whose work I adore to suggest one title for the list. Consult the end of each post for the growing list of recommendations! Click here to register.Throughout my tenure as the December Writer-In-Residence, I will be assembling a list of 17 must-read-books for 2017. He currently serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Disability Project at the Transgender Law Center. Mellon Foundation to amplify the voices of disabled creatives.

Clare’s work has also been recognized with a Disability Futures fellowship, an initiative funded by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Brilliant Imperfection received the Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction in 2018. Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, praised the collection, citing how Clare “delineates a complex human intersection and transmutes cruelty into its opposite-a potent, lifegiving remedy.” In 2017, Clare published Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, which scrutinizes how bodies are cared for-and controlled-by concepts of how to cure them. His 2007 work, The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion, combines poetry and prose to dramatize the body as a site of personal and political history. His nonfiction debut Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (1999), narrated his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist and writer, and is credited with breaking new ground at the intersection of disability politics and queer liberation. Eli Clare is a poet, essayist, and social justice educator.

Exile and Pride by Eli Clare