Love in a Fucked-Up World

How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together

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By Dean Spade

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$14.99

Price

$19.99 CAD

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  1. ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD
  2. Trade Paperback $19.99 $25.99 CAD

From celebrated trans activist and author of Mutual Aid Dean Spade comes a practical manifesto for how to live out your radical political values in your intimate relationships

Around the globe, people are faced with a spiraling succession of crises, from the pandemic and climate change-induced disasters to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. Many of us feel mobilized to organize and collectively combat these issues on both a personal and political level, often dedicating our lives to the forwarding of progressive ideas and the daunting goal of trying to bend the world toward justice.
 
But too often we think of our political values as outward-facing positions again dominant systems of power. Rarely, if ever, do we pursue the same kind of justice close to home, in our relationships to ourselves and to those closest to us. No matter how ardently we want to see the world change, our lives and connections will continue to stagnate unless we liberate ourselves from the cultural scripts that too often dictate our behavior toward others.
 
How do we become intentional about our levels of connection? How do we separate our expectations of love from the baggage left to us by our parents? How do we divest from the idea that one romantic partner will be the solution to all our problems? This book offers a roadmap for how to bring our best thinking about freedom and justice into step with our desires for healing and connection.
 
Lifelong activist and educator Dean Spade dares us to decide that our interpersonal actions are not separate from our politics of liberation and resistance. Love in a F*cked-Up World is a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, preparing us for the work of changing the world.
 

Genre:

  • Praise for Dean Spade's Mutual Aid:

    "We need this book right now! This reads like a how-to manual for modern and future interdependence. Dean walks us through what mutual aid is, best practices, pitfalls, and helps us tap into the wisdom and potential of this strategy for surviving the crises we can anticipate and those that will surprise us. Read this and move from a scarcity/charity mindset to one of abundant solidarity!"
    adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
  • "At once a call-to-arms, a balm for all those despairing at the present and future, and a blueprint for how we might better live with one another."
    Daniel Fernandez, The Nation
  • "Peter Kropotkin called mutual aid a 'factor in evolution.' The Black Panther Party called it 'survival pending revolution.' Dean Spade tells us that mutual aid is fundamental to making revolution. It is about building solidarity, preparing for battle, and creating a culture of collective care to displace the atomizing culture of individualism and the market. An indispensable guide for our moment, this book teaches us that effective social movements are impossible without mutual aid. Read every page. Carry it everywhere. Share it with everyone. Change everything."
    Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
  • "Urgently calling for radical creativity and transformative change, Spade invites readers to think critically about their roles in groups and liberation."
    Heather Munao, Booklist
  • "Spade outlines how the systems we currently have in place are not set up to meet people’s needs—as we’ve seen highlighted by last year’s major global disruption."
    Maria Ricapito, Marie Claire

On Sale
Jan 14, 2025
Page Count
256 pages
Publisher
Algonquin Books
ISBN-13
9781643756479

Dean Spade

About the Author

Grassroots activist, attorney, educator, and public speaker, Dean Spade is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next). He has worked for twenty years as a leading voice for trans rights, prison abolition, and mutual aid, and has been interviewed by Bloomberg TV, Democracy Now, the Nation, the Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness podcast, and countless other media outlets. He is a sought after public speaker who regularly offers seminars and webinars that draw in thousands of attendees and teaches at the Seattle University School of Law.

Learn more about this author