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. show more