Touch Me, I'm Sick

“In Touch Me, I’m Sick, Margeaux Feldman explores cultural responses to trauma and illness through a brilliant tapestry of research, criticism, and narrative. Drawing on feminist, queer, and disability justice lineages, Feldman not only astutely critiques the violence of capitalism and heteropatriarchy but—importantly—also imagines beyond it. At once impressively rigorous and deeply personal, Feldman’s gorgeous debut is a love letter and a guide toward radical care, healing, and belonging.” —Raechel Anne Jolie, author of Rust Belt Femme “For every nonbinary babe and girl who ever felt too much, too unwell, too easily slotted into the role of the hysterical femme, let Touch Me, I’m Sick be your queer feminist guidebook and middle finger to Freud and all the bad patriarchs of Western psychology. An impeccably wise memoir that skillfully joins the heartbreaking lessons of author Margeaux Feldman’s life as a parentified child and constant caregiver with some of the most urgent conversations about disability justice, trauma studies, and pleasure activism happening today; they give us a manual for accepting the messiest parts of ourselves, however imperfect, excessive, and perpetually worthy of love.” —Muriel Leung, author of How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster “Touch Me, I’m Sick is a highly potent text that works its spell on the reader within the rich intersections of queer studies, disability studies, literary theory, psychology, and various modes of healing work. This book is an impressive addition to a growing canon of books that emphasize intimacy—‘hysterical intimacy,’ at that—as a powerful antidote to trauma. Margeaux Feldman boldly asks us to ‘get slutty with our care’ and to consider the power of ‘soft magic’ while generously sharing stories from their life. What might happen if we ‘moved toward the call of touch me, i’m sick’? they ask. My answer: a revolution in how we approach healing from trauma. May this book find all its readers: the queer, the sick, the healers, and everyone in need of healing.” —Wendy C. Ortiz, psychotherapist and author of Excavation: A Memoir “Tenderly written and courageously conceived, Margeaux Feldman’s Touch Me, I’m Sick is a collection of essays that speaks deeply to readers on the levels of heart, head, and soul. Feldman gracefully interweaves intimate storytelling with deep intellectual analysis, spinning together the threads of personal narrative, disability justice, psychology and trauma theory, and transformative justice to make a unique contribution to the lineage of queer and trans cultural work. Readers yearning for a vision of social justice that holds complexity and nuance are sure to find refuge in Feldman’s care-filled words. This book is medicine.” —Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World