“A dazzling and revelatory ride.”
— Rebecca Ann Parker, co-author of Saving Paradise
Loving Our Own Bones
Rethinking Disability in an Ableist World
UK edition, published by Hodder & Stoughton
Julia Watts Belser gets stopped by strangers wanting to know what’s wrong with her. But what’s wrong isn’t her wheelchair – it’s exclusion, objectification, pity and disdain. These attitudes about disability have such deep cultural roots we almost forget their sources. But open the Bible and disability is everywhere. Moses stutters and thinks himself unable to answer God’s call. Isaac’s blindness lets his wife trick him into bestowing his blessing on his younger son. Jacob wrestles with an angel and limps forever after. Jesus heals the sick, the blind, the paralysed and the possessed. For centuries, these stories have been told and retold by commentators who treat disability as misfortune, as a metaphor for spiritual incapacity, or as a challenge to be overcome.
Loving Our Own Bones turns that perspective on its head. Part spiritual companion and part political manifesto, this book cuts through objectification and inspiration alike to offer a powerful new account of disability in biblical narrative and contemporary culture. Drawing on her unique expertise as a scholar, rabbi, and disability activist, Julia Watts Belser reads biblical stories through her lived experience of life on wheels.
With insights from the hard-won wisdom of the disability community, Julia Watts Belser talks back to biblical commentators who traffic in disability stigma and shame. She shows how Sabbath rest can be a powerful counter to the relentless demand for productivity, and speaks back to a culture that says we’re only as good as our last accomplishment.
These aren’t insights for the disability community alone. We all have a stake in uprooting ableism. Ableism is part of what drives a brutal culture of efficiency that treats the body as an obstacle to someone else’s bottom line. Ableism is the fear that gnaws us in the night: that we only matter if we’re healthy, wealthy and well. Loving Our Own Bones shows how disability politics can help us challenge those lies – and invites readers to claim the power and promise of radical self-love.
Also available as an ebook and an audiobook.
Loving Our Own Bones is available at Bookshop, Amazon.uk, Waterstones, Blackwell’s, and your local independent bookstore.
Praise for Loving Our Own Bones
“Belser’s book is a triumph of theological insight, disability activism, and honest, personal, hard-won wisdom . . . An excellent, impressive addition to the conversation around theology and disability that shines on many levels.”
— Library Journal, Starred Review
“A rigorous and broad-minded analysis of disability in the Bible. . . An impressive achievement.”
— Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review
“Julia Watts Belser is a vital voice whose writing speaks intimately to the deep, hard, beautiful truths of disabled life.”
— Claire Cunningham, disabled choreographer & performance artist
“A necessary and fervent invitation to dream a new world into existence, one that celebrates disability wisdom and radical love. Julia Watts Belser’s powerful spiritual insights offer hope that we can create such a vibrant world together.”
— Amy Kenny, author of My Body is Not A Prayer Request
“An unapologetically embodied text, Loving Our Own Bones is essential reading for anyone interested in queer crip world-making. Seamlessly weaving together memoir, disability theory, biblical criticism, and activist practice, Julia Watts Belser offers readers vital new frameworks for understanding the textures of disabled life and the possibilities of story. Placing radically inclusive access at the center of her spiritual work, Belser reveals how loving our own bones is a collective act.”
— Alison Kafer, author of Feminist, Queer, Crip
“From the very first page of this brilliant and soulful book, I found myself moved to tears... Julia Watts Belser is a Wisdom Rebbe, a leader, an innovator, and a sacred guide to the deepest depths of all that makes us human.”
— Neshama Carlebach, Award Winning Singer/Songwriter
“This book reaches back to the oldest stories of the Hebrew Bible and retells them through perspectives on flourishing in bodies considered disabled—the kinds of bodies we all inevitably inhabit. Loving Our Own Bones is a gift to us all and a call to love ourselves and one another in all our varied, distinctive, and entirely human bodies.”
— Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, author of Extraordinary Bodies
“This is an extraordinary book: beautifully written and accessible yet filled with scholarly insights; profoundly spiritual yet also boldly critical; fiercely angry yet also affirming and joyous. Readers of Loving Our Own Bones will not only come away with a deepened understanding of disability and ableism but will also likely have their views of many biblical texts challenged and transformed.”
— Judith Plaskow, coauthor of Goddess and God in the World
“Written with a scholar’s deft touch and a poet’s lyrical precision, this book will draw you in to think and feel differently about sacred texts and disabled people’s complex and luminous lives, in the troublesome context of ableism’s strictures and structures. By the end, I was transported to new vistas, unimagined openings in my heart and understanding. Julia Watts Belser’s ability to move differently carries the reader to new realms: Loving Our Own Bones is a book that flies on wheels, a dazzling and revelatory ride.”
— Rebecca Ann Parker, co-author of Saving Paradise