Beasts of Burden
Animal and Disability Liberation
Will be published approx. on 3. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
979-8-89385-027-7 (ISBN)
Description
A bold and beautifully written inquiry into the intertwined struggles for animal and disability justice-challenging what it means to be human
In this provocative and original work, artist, activist, and scholar Sunaura Taylor, "Judith Butler meets St. Francis of Assisi" (The New Yorker), explores the profound connections between animal liberation and disability justice. With keen insight and lyrical prose, Beasts of Burden asks us to reconsider long-held assumptions about autonomy, dependence, and what defines a life worth valuing.
Blending memoir, philosophy, and cultural critique, Taylor draws on her lived experience as a disabled person and lifelong animal advocate to examine how society marginalizes both disabled people and nonhuman animals-often through the same systems of power and exclusion. From the ethics of caregiving to the realities of factory farming, she invites readers to "crip" our understanding of animal ethics, opening the door to new forms of empathy and solidarity across difference.
As Rebecca Solnit has written, "Sunaura Taylor will shake up your categories, turn your world inside out, and tell you a lot of fascinating and important things you didn't know yet, about your own body and the bodies of others, human and nonhuman, under an inhumane regime."
In this provocative and original work, artist, activist, and scholar Sunaura Taylor, "Judith Butler meets St. Francis of Assisi" (The New Yorker), explores the profound connections between animal liberation and disability justice. With keen insight and lyrical prose, Beasts of Burden asks us to reconsider long-held assumptions about autonomy, dependence, and what defines a life worth valuing.
Blending memoir, philosophy, and cultural critique, Taylor draws on her lived experience as a disabled person and lifelong animal advocate to examine how society marginalizes both disabled people and nonhuman animals-often through the same systems of power and exclusion. From the ethics of caregiving to the realities of factory farming, she invites readers to "crip" our understanding of animal ethics, opening the door to new forms of empathy and solidarity across difference.
As Rebecca Solnit has written, "Sunaura Taylor will shake up your categories, turn your world inside out, and tell you a lot of fascinating and important things you didn't know yet, about your own body and the bodies of others, human and nonhuman, under an inhumane regime."
Reviews / Votes
Praise for Beasts of Burden:2018 American Book Award Winner
"Judith Butler meets St. Francis of Assisi."
-The New Yorker
"I am not the same animal I was before I read this book."
-Alison Kafer, author of Feminist, Queer, Crip
"Finally, finally someone has come along to undo all the damage Peter Singer has done. Beasts of Burden is a brave and brilliant book."
-Michael Berube, author of Life as We Know It and The Secret Life of Stories
"Beasts of Burden is a game-changer."
-Marc Bekoff, author of Rewilding Our Hearts and The Animals' AgendaFeminist, Queer, Crip
"This is a profound and wondrous book. Sunaura Taylor challenges us to rethink what is normal, what is natural, how to measure the value of a life-and how to imagine a world in which both human and nonhuman animals, resplendent in their differences and multiplicity, might flourish."
-Claire Jean Kim, author of Dangerous Crossings
"A powerful blend of sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, personal stories and sharp, passionate writing."
-Lori Gruen, author of Entangled Empathy and Ethics and Animals
"Sunaura Taylor will shake up your categories, turn your world inside-out, and tell you a lot of fascinating and important things you didn't know yet, about your own body and the bodies of others, human and nonhuman, under an inhumane regime. A startling, readable, sometimes hilarious inquiry into the human condition from a whole new direction, this book might be very, very important, a book to stand alongside The Body in Pain and The Human Condition."
-Rebecca Solnit
"Sunaura Taylor has written an amazing book that acts both as an intervention into widely held beliefs about disability and animals and an invitation to reimagine ourselves. Her thoroughly original, brilliant narrative transformed my imagination."
-Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 215 mm
Width: 139 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
305 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-89385-027-7 (9798893850277)
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
Sunaura Taylor is an artist and writer based in New York City. She has written for AlterNet, American Quarterly, BOMB, the Monthly Review, Qui Parle, and Yes! magazine and has contributed to the books Ecofeminism, Defiant Daughters, Occupy!, Stay Solid, and Infinite City. Taylor and Judith Butler's conversation is featured in the film Examined Life and the book of the same name, published by The New Press.