Overview

2018 American Book Award Winner A beautifully written, deeply provocative inquiry into the intersection of animal and disability liberation-and the debut of an important new social critic How much of what we understand of ourselves as ""human"" depends on our physical and mental abilities-how we move (or cannot move) in and interact with the world? And how much of our definition of ""human"" depends on its difference from ""animal""? Drawing on her own experiences as a disabled person, a disability activist, and an animal advocate, author Sunaura Taylor persuades us to think deeply, and sometimes uncomfortably, about what divides the human from the animal, the disabled from the nondisabled-and what it might mean to break down those divisions, to claim the animal and the vulnerable in ourselves, in a process she calls ""cripping animal ethics."" Beasts of Burden suggests that issues of disability and animal justice-which have heretofore primarily been presented in opposition-are in fact deeply entangled. Fusing philosophy, memoir, science, and the radical truths these disciplines can bring-whether about factory farming, disability oppression, or our assumptions of human superiority over animals-Taylor draws attention to new worlds of experience and empathy that can open up important avenues of solidarity across species and ability. Beasts of Burden is a wonderfully engaging and elegantly written work, both philosophical and personal, by a brilliant new voice.

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9781620971284

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Praise for Beasts of Burden Sunaura Taylor will shake up your categories, turn your world inside-out, and tell you a lot of fascinating and important things you didn t know yet, about your own body and the bodies of others, human and nonhuman, under an inhumane regime. A startling, readable, sometimes hilarious inquiry into the human condition from a whole new direction, this book might be very, very important, a book to stand alongside The Body in Pain and The Human Condition. Rebecca Solnit Sunaura Taylor has written an amazing book that acts both as an intervention into widely held beliefs about disability and animals and an invitation to reimagine ourselves. Her thoroughly original, brilliant narrative transformed my imagination. Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat

Praise for Beasts of Burden Sunaura Taylor will shake up your categories, turn your world inside-out, and tell you a lot of fascinating and important things you didn't know yet, about your own body and the bodies of others, human and nonhuman, under an inhumane regime. A startling, readable, sometimes hilarious inquiry into the human condition from a whole new direction, this book might be very, very important, a book to stand alongside The Body in Pain and The Human Condition. --Rebecca Solnit Sunaura Taylor has written an amazing book that acts both as an intervention into widely held beliefs about disability and animals and an invitation to reimagine ourselves. Her thoroughly original, brilliant narrative transformed my imagination. --Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat

Author Information

Sunaura Taylor is an artist and writer based in New York City. She has written for AlterNet, ""American Quarterly,"" ""BOMB,"" the ""Monthly Review,"" ""Qui Parle,"" and ""Yes! Magazine."" She has contributed to the books ""Ecofeminism,"" ""Defiant Daughters,"" ""Occupy!,"" ""Stay Solid,"" and ""Infinite City."" Taylor and Judith Butler's conversation is featured in the film ""Examined Life"" and the book of the same title, published by The New Press.

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