“I grew up to the words cripple, retard, monkey, defect, took all the staring into me and learned to shut it out.”
The list of slurs, starkly presented without conjunctions, mimics the overwhelming accumulation of these words throughout Eli Clare’s life. Their placement in a single sentence (bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!) illustrates the relentlessness and inescapability of the labels. Clare writes he—“grew up to the words”—meaning these disparaging words have been a constant for the entirety of his development. The phrase “learned to shut it out” indicates survival but not resolution; language’s wounds remain even if they are silenced.
Clare complicates this depiction of linguistic violence by exploring how marginalized people navigate the tension between self-hatred and pride. He writes: “The body as home, but only if it is understood that language too lives under the skin… They mark the jagged edge between self-hatred and pride, the chasm between how the dominant culture views marginalized peoples and how we view ourselves, the razor between finding home, finding our bodies, and living in exile, living on the metaphoric mountain.” The metaphor of the razor demonstrates the power of words– they cut, wound, and represent the precarious boundary between acceptance and rejection.
The mountain, a recurring symbol in Clare’s work, also functions as a metaphor for linguistic violence. When describing the decision to climb Mount Adams, Clare acknowledges: “Climbed surely because I wanted the summit, because of the love rumbling in my bones. But climbed also because I wanted to say, ‘Yes, I have CP, but see. See, watch me. I can climb mountains too.'” The repetition of see emphasizes the internalized pressure to prove oneself through unmistakable action, forced by the ableist gaze. The mountain becomes a linguistic construct as much as a physical one, representing the unattainable standard of overcoming disability. Clare’s eventual decision to turn back suggests a rejection of these imposed narratives, yet the mountain’s grip implies that the violence of language cannot be fully escaped. Words remain “written on the body,” if you will, forever shaping how we see ourselves.
The last paragraph of your post reminds me of what Therun Silver mentioned in their comment on “Carnivals, Swimming Pools, and Elusive Trans Narratives” about how often Clare refers to vision in relation to identity. This idea is evidenced again in the second paragraph of your post where you mention Clare’s quote “the chasm between how the dominant culture views marginalized peoples and how we view ourselves.” I think it could be particularly interesting if you elaborated on this idea of sight as a way of understanding in connection to internalized bigotry and “shaping how we view ourselves” (as you said) in a world that is not always kind to marginalized groups.
I loved your close reading in this post, particularly of the part of the sentence “I grew up to the words.” Not only, as you said, is it implying continuity of Eli Clare’s childhood, but I think it’s interesting that the word “to” in that sentence made me think of music, or to sound, that in some ways raises us as kids. I feel like growing up “to” something is a much more meaningful and attached wording, really showing just how imbedded slurs were in Clare as a child and to his developing identity.
I like the mention of sentence structure in this close reading. I also realized that when first reading this sentence it felt very “bam,bam,bam,bam” like a hurling of insults. The following quote and analysis really drove home the goal of Eli Clare’s mentioning of this trauma. This would be very good for your close reading — I wonder if it would be possible to connect these ideas to Clare’s decision to “not going up the mountain” as he asserts towards the end of his writing.
I love this anaylsis! Your first paragraph in particular stuck out to me, specifically your line, “language’s wounds remain even if they are silenced”. This is just so accurate. I was thinking specifcally about slurs and how some people reclaim certain slurs, while others still feel the anger and violence from the word and choose not to reclaim it. Language is such a powerful tool and even if we get used to certain sayings or words that are used against us, they still hold not only violence, but harsh, real histories that still have real life impacts.