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.
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/
The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health
The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s books Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice and The Future is Disabled
Megan Linton’s Invisible Institutions podcast
Hil Malatino’s book Trans Care (the free open access version is available here)
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)
Katie Batza’s book Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s
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
Interrupting Criminalization’s brief We Must Fight In Solidarity With Trans Youth: Drawing the Connections Between Our Movements
The show discusses topics that are important to our collective survival and thrival… We also dig into ways youth (and anyone really) can gain new skills to thrive amid current and ongoing disasters. The show will take a deep dive on these issues, and be in conversations with incredible guests! The hosts are Uilliam (Liam) Joy and carla joy bergman.
Music for the show by: Sour Gout
Logo art by Robin Carrico