In Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, Eli Clare explores his sense of identity through the lenses of gender and disability. Clare is a transgender man who has Cerebral Palsy–a disability that affects movement. In the first chapter of this book, “The Mountain,” Clare repeatedly brings up this idea of the body being home. However, he juxtaposes this feeling of belonging in a physical body by stating that “bodies can be stolen, fed lies and poison, torn away from us,” (Clare 12). Clare begins the paragraph by offering his readers comfort, showing them that regardless of the communities they are ostracized from and the family that might hate them for their identity, they all belong somewhere, and that is in their own body. However, he takes this comfort away from the readers by mentioning that our bodies can be stolen and we can stop feeling like they are our own.
Clare is bringing to light his own past trauma, showing the readers that he did not feel in control of his body. There were people in his life whom he trusted, including his own father, and they tortured Clare for years, stealing that trust and controlling his body. This caused Clare to disassociate from his own body–the one thing that should be his and his alone.
I don’t believe that Clare tells his audience about his past trauma because he wants us to feel scared and alone. I think Clare shares these moments in his life for the purpose of teaching his readers a valuable lesson: “the stolen body can be reclaimed,” (Clare 13). At the time when Clare was being physically and sexually abused, he still identified as female. He had all of this trauma associated with that female identity. By transitioning away from the female-identifying self that was abused for years, Clare was given the space to heal, reclaim his own body, and embrace his identity as a transgender man. He made a decision for himself, allowing him to feel in control of his own body and identity.
Clare has written a lot about his multi-faceted identity and how his body comes into play. That being said, he also explores the bigger picture: even though our identity can change throughout the course of our life, it will always be a part of who we are. We can change our identity to better fit how we feel inside, but our identity can never be taken away from us, unlike our body. From Clare’s own identity as a disabled person, a former lesbian, and a trans man, his identity is something that will always belong to him, just as our identities will always belong to us.