Nasty Work: Resist Systems, Explore Desire, and Liberate Yourself

Name: Nasty Work: Resist Systems, Explore Desire, and Liberate Yourself
Brand: Storehouse Voices
SKU: 9780593497975
Price: 36.00 USD
Availability: InStock

$36.00

Product Variants

Biographical Note:
Ericka Hart, M.Ed. (she/they) has been teaching comprehensive, trauma-informed, consent- and pleasure-based sex-ed at the elementary, high school, undergraduate and graduate level for the past fifteen years and is now the founder of her own sexuality education training program, Sex Ed as Resistance. She co-hosts the critically acclaimed podcast Hoodrat to Headwrap with her partner, Ebony, and is the mom to their child, East Francis Coltrane (and their cockapoo, Baguette).

Review Quotes:
"In Nasty Work, Ericka Hart sheds light on how oppressive forces have shaped many of the ways in which we think about our bodies, sex, and sexuality, and how much harm that has done to us individually and collectively. But more importantly, Hart offers opportunities for us to discover what our authentic relationships to our bodies and sexuality may be, and what that can bring to our lives. This book doesn't tell you how to be in your body or what your sexual relationships have to look like, it instead invites you to find your own personal and pleasurable relationship with yourself and with others in liberatory ways." --Ijeoma Oluo, New York Times bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Be a Revolution

" Nasty Work undoes a deeply held convention, that our desires are of our own making. Hart clarifies how antiblackness, queerphobia, transphobia, ableism, and capitalism craft our bedrooms and relational experiences. Hart beautifully weaves together memoir, cultural criticism, and theory inviting the reader to deconstruct their desires as the necessary work towards radically unearthing new depths of pleasure." --Patrice D. Douglass, author of Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence

"This isn't just a sexuality guide, it's an expose; a comprehensive takedown of how society has failed black, brown, and queer people in the most intimate way. It's a celebration of the perseverance of those bodies, breaking centuries long chains that up to this point were largely regarded as invisible. The writing is not only provocative, the message is urgently needed." --Chris Smalls, Co-Founder of the Amazon Labor Union, author of When the Revolution Comes

" Nasty Work unveils intimate and precarious labors so that we can personally and collectively experience our private and public lives to resist predatory violence. Elevating the agency of Black/femme/female/queer and child, this book courageously embraces the labor of love that guides resistance to cuts, bruises, violent denigration, and exploitation. Boldly revealing personal and political experiences and injuries, offering enlightenment that elevates our intimate knowledge, Ericka Hart's book guides to mend body, mind, and spirit." --Joy James, author of In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love and New Bones Abolition

Publisher Marketing:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - An award-winning sexuality educator takes down society's deeply entrenched colonial views on sex and gender throughout history in this accessible, candid, and revolutionary exploration of how we can--and should--reclaim our minds and bodies for a more pleasurable existence for all.

When you think about sex ed, your mind likely goes back to those uncomfortable school desks and the stifled laughs of your teenage years. But what we've been socialized to believe about sexuality actually hinders our own pleasure well into adulthood. Whether we know it or not, even the most progressive among us are often using 400-year-old inherited thoughts and belief systems in the twenty-first century. Why are we still carrying forth these ancient values that have never served the vast majority?

As a Black, queer, non-binary, disabled femme, Ericka Hart believes that sex ed done right can actually be a tool for liberation. In Nasty Work, she breaks down the ways that social implications keep us from experiencing pleasure, particularly for marginalized communities across race, gender, sexuality, and ability, and how we can dismantle these oppressive myths. From examining what guides our attraction to others to the history of consent, Ericka Hart takes the blinders off and reveals a more empowering view of sex and sexuality.

Nasty Work blends eye-opening research with powerful, poignant personal narrative that disrupts everything you thought you knew about sex and society, offering a liberatory framework that makes pleasure accessible for all.