In Carnival Bound (or, please unwrap me), Kara Dorris and Gwendolyn Paradice weave the freakshow into the fairy tale and let slip the spare limbs and internal attitudes of carnival mainstays. In these pages, princesses and sex workers in wheelchairs navigate the conventions of the three-ring while wet paper (wo)men and fortune-tellers in individual tents perform feats and teases for those that have the means to pay for it. Dorris and Paradice show that every circus act has a basis in the body in tandem depictions of disability that ask: What would you exchange in order to access a body? What would you access in order to exchange a body? What escapes are available at the carnival come to town—and for whom? This place blows. Let’s run away.
Kara Dorris 