In Care at the End of the World, Jina B. Kim develops what she calls crip-of-color critique, bringing a disability lens to bear on feminist- and queer-of-color literature in the aftermath of 1996 US welfare reform and the subsequent evisceration of social safety nets. She examines literature by contemporary feminist, queer, and disabled writers of color such as Jesmyn Ward, Octavia Butler, Karen Tei Yamashita, Samuel Delany, and Aurora Levins Morales, who each bring disability and dependency to the forefront of their literary freedom dreaming. Kim shows that in their writing, liberation does not take the shape of the unfettered individual or hinge on achieving independence. Instead, liberation emerges by recuperating dependency, cultivating radical interdependency, and recognizing the numerous support systems upon which survival depends. At the same time, Kim demonstrates how theories and narratives of disability can intervene into state-authored myths of resource parasitism, such as the welfare queen. In so doing, she highlights the alternate structures of care these writers envision and their dreams of life organized around reciprocity and mutual support.

Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award

Jina B. Kim is Assistant Professor of English and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Smith College.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction: Dreaming of Infrastructure  1
1. Cripping the Welfare Queen: Disability and Infrastructural Violence in Sapphire’s Push and Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones  27
2. Refuse Work: Samuel Delany’s Crip-Queer Ethics and Erotics of Waste Management  59
3. Lines of Transit, Migration, Mobility: Cripping the Freeway Fictions of Karen Tei Yamashita and Octavia E. Butler  92
4. Care at the End of the World: Health/Care Infrastructure and Disability Justice Life-Writing  129
Epilogue: The Mourning After  157
Notes  165
Bibliography  187
Index