by Kimberly Dark
AK Press
6/29/2021, paperback
SKU: 9781849354141
People who have been damaged, thrown away, marginalized, or traumatized are more capable of apprehending social patterns, precisely because they've needed to be aware and vigilant about how the world works. For too long, those who rely on long-held rights and entitlement have claimed that others are biased about the very topics on which they have expertise. Damaged Like Me is a series of essays and stories that reveal a complex social landscape. It shows how possible and vital it is to build roads to a more equitable and loving collective culture that includes body sovereignty, racial justice, gender equity/liberation, and much more. It does so by relying on the insights and approaches to knowledge production of those on the receiving end of inequity and violence, those whose "objectivity" on issues of oppression has been consistently maligned despite their having the most to teach us.
Reviews:
"Kimberly Dark has forever transformed the way I understand sex, gender, and the notion of 'damage.' The patriarchy should be terrified of this book. The rest of us can stick it in our hearts--emboldenment for the revolution." --Ariel Gore, author of Hexing the Patriarchy
Like a topo map that transcends our known meridians toward expansiveness and allows us to sit with the past to create a livable future, Kimberly Dark's Damaged Like Me invites us, from our 'stigmatized positions, ' to step closer to our damage as sites of knowledge indispensable to our healing and our knowing. Through personal storytelling and intellectual inquiry, Dark generously re-stories these locations of damage as places of hope and regrowth, all while asking us to speak aloud how we come to love and let ourselves be loved. This book is an act of queer abundance. --Cooper Lee Bombardier, author of Pass With Care: Memoirs
About the Author:
Kimberly Dark is a writer, professor, and raconteur. She has written award-winning plays, and taught and performed for a wide range of audiences in various countries over the past two decades. She is the author of Fat, Pretty, and Soon to be Old; The Daddies; Love and Errors; and co-editor of the anthology Ways of Being in Teaching.