Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

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.