Eli Clare

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QUEERIES: My Love for Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride and Why You Should Go Ahead and Read It, Okay?

I haven’t connected to any other class’s readings as I have connected with Eli Clare’s Exile & Pride. I’m trying to figure out why, and I still don’t rightly know, but I needed to share.

It seems obvious to say, “Well, I like the subject matter,” but really. I do. And it is all very different but so intrinsically connected, that I feel bad that I ever doubted the meshing of these worlds into one book. The environment, queerness, and disability (to narrow it down to a main triad) are all sides of the same coin. The environment–the one he have created and the one that has always been–often dictates disability. Disability provokes a queer understanding of identity. Being queer in different environments–rural and urban–is like being a polar bear or a house cat,  a bird or a lost lizard in a sewer. The criticism that Clare invokes when talking about these topics is also critical of race and ethnicity and of privilege and gender. Who was the first to claim land as an inexhaustible resource? Who dictates the gender and sexual norms? Who creates the urban space that perpetuates disability? Clare touches on all of these linked together identities and sites, and it feels so right. I learned so much from Clare’s writing, but I also picked up his sense of criticism; that calm, assertive, compassionate voice that questions why and kicks out with fervor. Clare’s criticism is beatifically formed and so god damn smart, but it’s not the only thing that keeps me in the book.

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A Home Within the Body?

So after reading a bit of Exile and Pride, I thought it interesting that Eli Clare considered his body as what was home to him.  To me, home had always been anything BUT my body.  For instance, the roof I live under is considered home to me, the neighborhood I live in is considered home to me, being surrounded by my family and their mannerisms and so on.   When looking at what my body is to me, it’s just simply that . . . my body.  I look at it as a piece of property owned by me.

Then Clare starts putting labels on his body, such as queer and disabled, which describes who he is and how it describes his body as home.  In relation to my own body, I’ve never considered even putting labels on it because the idea never occurred to me.  Don’t get me wrong, my body is very special to me, because it was given to me specially when I was born into this world, but I just can’t come to the point of naming it home, and putting labels on it.  That seems kind of abnormal to me.  Instead, on an ending note, I’d like to also look at my body simply as a miraculous piece of work that serves as a protection for my soul, which is in charge of my inner thoughts, actions, etc., contained inside.