Submitted by Caterina Rost on April 25, 2016 - 11:30am
Please come out for the following two amazing events for Diversity Month, sponsored by the Diversity Center! Cosponsored by the Q Center with more cosponsors TBA
Being Beloved: A Writing Workshop on Disability and Desirability
Wednesday, April 27
5:30 PM
D Center, 024 MGH (Mary Gates Hall)
I have a button on my sweatshirt with a wheelchair symbol on it that reads "Lame is Sexy". I love that button, but no one else seems to get it. Despite our best efforts at defining ourselves, society often tell us that sexy, desirable and disabled (or "crazy", chronically ill or "unhealthy") are on the opposite ends of the spectrum.
How do these messages show up in our lives? From relationships to work to self-image and beyond? Too often we're told that if we are desirable it's in spite of our illness or disabilities, because we hide them so well, or because our other qualities outshine them. We're told that we're lucky to find partners who want to be with us or jobs that will pay us. This workshop says a metaphorical "fuck you!" to all that.
Using the premise of storytelling as medicine, as an act of resistance and radical re-imagination, we'll explore the connections between desirability and disability in the existing world, then tear it apart and build gorgeous new worlds where disability IS desirable and where we are ALL deeply beloved. Together we will gently loosen the tight knots of ableism and other oppressions that bind us, taking a few more steps on our individual and collective paths towards liberation.
Presenter Bio: Amber Vora is a fantasy and speculative fiction writer, a parent, a community educator and a long-time anti-violence activist working for disability justice. She co-founded the Seattle Disability Justice Collective in 2011 to build community with and highlight the brilliance and wisdom of people of color and queer/trans folks with disabilities. Amber is a bi-queer, mixed race (Gujarati Indian and European-American "white") woman who lives with multiple, invisible disabilities. She believes that art, spirit and storytelling hold the power to bring about individual and collective healing and the joyful, liberated worlds we long for.
Brilliant Imperfection: A Reading with Eli Clare
Friday, April 29
7-9PM
Husky Union Building 332
The D Center is proud to welcome noted queer and trans disabled writer and activist EliClare to Seattle for a reading and discussion of his new book. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure! This is our keynote event for D Month. Books will be for sale by Left Bank Books!
Join queer disabled writer and activist Eli Clare for an exploration of cure and diagnosis. Using memoir, history, and critical analysis, Eli uncovers how cure as an ideology serves many purposes. It saves lives, manipulates lives, prioritizes lives, makes profits, justifies violence, and promises resolution to body-mind loss. He grapples with this knot of contradictions, maintaining that neither an anti-cure politics nor a pro-cure worldview can account for the messy, complex relationships we all have with our bodies and minds. He tells stories and histories from disability communities, people of color communities, fat activist communities, and queer and transgender communities, always drawing upon interlocking experiences of race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender.
Access info: The HUB building is wheelchair accessible, and adjacent to parking lot N22, which is reserved for disability parking. There are all-genders bathrooms that are wheelchair accessible on the same floor as the event. Arm-free chair seating and wheelchair/ accoter seating is available. This event will be CART and ASL interpreted. We ask that everyone come fragrance free, and will have air purifiers on site. We will also livestream the talk for folks who can't physically be present.
About Eli: White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare happily lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written a book of essays Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation and a collection of poetry The Marrow's Telling: Words in Motion and has been published in many periodicals and anthologies. His newest work, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, will be released early next year. Eli speaks, teaches, and facilitates all over the United States and Canada at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, queer and trans identities, and social justice. Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queerness and Disability Conference