The Grounded Futures Show, Ep #19 Liberated Care, with Zena Sharman

“I think about care as a process, as an ongoing act of weaving — that it is this active thing that we do, that happens in relationships, that happens in communities.”

Zena Sharman joins the show to talk casting spells and weaving webs of care beyond institutions. This episode is all about intergenerational solidarity, and queering kinship and care in the everyday. Zena is a writer, speaker, strategist and LGBTQ+ health advocate and our conversation goes deep into the radical possibilities for care as an ongoing, consensual process — from grief care to ageing and dying, to gender open parenting, to centring pleasure and disability justice in health care.

Show Notes

Follow Zena on Twitter

Zena’s two books:

The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health

 The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care

Photo of Zena for show is by K. Ho

Recommendations: 

• Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s books Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice and The Future is Disabled
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• Megan Linton’s Invisible Institutions podcast
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• Hil Malatino’s book Trans Care (the free open access version is available here)
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• Jules Gill-Peterson's article Doctors Who? Radical lessons from the history of DIY transition
• I didn't mention it during the interview, but this podcast interview The Legend of the Orchi Shed with Guest Eilís Ni Fhlannagáin is another wonderful example of an oral history about trans DIY health care
• The book Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (second edition)
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• Katie Batza’s book Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s
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• Dean Spade's mutual aid course syllabus, which includes Katie Batza's book alongside other health-related titles like Alondra Nelson’s book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination and the history of the Young Lords' health organizing, which is also covered in Mia Donovan’s Dope is Death podcast and documentary
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• Interrupting Criminalization's brief We Must Fight In Solidarity With Trans Youth: Drawing the Connections Between Our Movements

Transcript

Zena Sharman is a writer, speaker, strategist and LGBTQ+ health advocate. She’s the author of three books, including The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health (published by Arsenal Pulp Press in the fall of 2021). Zena edited the Lambda Literary award-winning anthology The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care. She’s also an engaging speaker who brings her passion for LGBTQ+ health to audiences of health care providers, students and community members at universities and conferences across North America. You can learn more about Zena and her work at https://zenasharman.com/

Music for our show by: Sour Gout

The GF Show art by Robin Carrico

Thanks for listening!