Through an Addict's Looking-Glass
Published on 29. June 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
114 pages
978-1-914221-20-0 (ISBN)
Description
Through an Addict's Looking-Glass is an exercise in meaning-making, a thinking-out-loud. Waithera Sebatindira unravels how it feels to live as an addict under capitalism, pondering how engaging with these experiences could bring the horizon of liberation towards us.
Through embodied explorations of addiction and recovery, Sebatindira invites us to inhabit crip time, a concept that describes different temporal realities in the lives of disabled people. In this collection, the addict's crip time is distorted, mutable and non-linear, hopping backwards and forwards through memory loops and memory loss. Blackout is time travel; sobriety is failure; finitude, freedom.
An uncompromising rejection of the objectification of addicts across the political spectrum, this powerful meditation on illness, disability, solidarity and spirituality illuminates their indispensable contributions to the building of a new world.
Through embodied explorations of addiction and recovery, Sebatindira invites us to inhabit crip time, a concept that describes different temporal realities in the lives of disabled people. In this collection, the addict's crip time is distorted, mutable and non-linear, hopping backwards and forwards through memory loops and memory loss. Blackout is time travel; sobriety is failure; finitude, freedom.
An uncompromising rejection of the objectification of addicts across the political spectrum, this powerful meditation on illness, disability, solidarity and spirituality illuminates their indispensable contributions to the building of a new world.
Reviews / Votes
'Deeply personal and generous in its offerings ... It portrays recovery as a return, the ebb and flow of the tide, and a distinctly non-linear experience.' - resting up collective zine'Ground-breaking, generous and gorgeously written ... An essential and utterly unique text, which will enhance your understanding of the connections between disability, addiction, Black feminism, abolition, faith and solidarity.' - Micha Frazer-Carroll, author of Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health
'Sebatindira's essays will astonish you. This meditation in spiral crip time weaves disability and black feminism with spirit, justice, memory, recovery and community, evoking the grounded and complex writing of Audre Lorde.' - Sonya Huber, author of Pain Woman Takes Your Keys
'With clarity and skill ... Sebatindira explores the new modes of critical analysis that emerge when we stay with the chaos and urgency of active addiction and recovery.' - Lola Olufemi, author of Experiments in Imagining Otherwise
'Incisive and critical ... A much-needed and warmly embraced intervention into contemporary debates on bodily autonomy, political agency and public health.' - Imani Mason Jordan, trustee of Release
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 406 mm
Width: 251 mm
Thickness: 2 mm
Weight
132 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-914221-20-0 (9781914221200)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Waithera Sebatindira is a Kenyan writer based in London. Their previous writing and research interests have included food imperialism, drag kings and gender transformation. They are the author of Through an Addict's Looking-Glass and a co-author of A FLY Girl's Guide to University: Being a Woman of Colour at Cambridge and Other Institutions of Elitism and Power.
Content
Playlist
Guka's Hands, or
The First Time My Hands Shook
Introduction
Memory Failures
Sober Failures
Is Addiction a Disability?
Rhythm
Ambivalence
A Note on Religion
Loneliness
Alcoholics and the Imago Dei
A Black Feminist God
Shame
Love Is a Doing Word
Abolition
Accountability
Afterlife
Sarah Is Reading a Poem in the
SOAS Students' Union
Acknowledgements
Notes
Guka's Hands, or
The First Time My Hands Shook
Introduction
Memory Failures
Sober Failures
Is Addiction a Disability?
Rhythm
Ambivalence
A Note on Religion
Loneliness
Alcoholics and the Imago Dei
A Black Feminist God
Shame
Love Is a Doing Word
Abolition
Accountability
Afterlife
Sarah Is Reading a Poem in the
SOAS Students' Union
Acknowledgements
Notes