Masculinities: Eli Clare, Stones in my pockets, stones in my heart

Led by Helena Reckitt

The second in the FDRG’s Masculinities series focuses on Eli Clare’s ‘Stones in my pockets, stones in my heart,’ 1999. Ableism and sexuality intersect with class and race in this affective work of creative life writing.

Moving between past, present, and an imagined future, Clare recalls their troubled white working class childhood, including the sexual abuse to which they were subjected, and the kinship with the landscape and its inhabitants that sustained them. Tracing a movement from isolation and shame to community belonging and grassroots activism, Clare explores what it means to listen to their body and reclaim their desires.

Published in 1999 as the trans liberation movement is gaining momentum, Clare wonders if they will find a home “as some third, fourth, fifth gender? Some gender that seems more possible since trans people have started to organize, build community, speak out about our lives. Some gender that I have already started reaching toward.” Clare writes: “You don't have pronouns yet for us.”

Bio

White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare lives near Lake Champlain in occupied Abenaki territory (currently known as Vermont) where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing.  In addition to Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, 1999, in which the text for today’s session appeared, he has written the work of creative non-fiction Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, and a poetry collection The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion. Clare speaks, teaches, and facilities at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, queer and trans identities, and social justice.

Reading

There is no need to read in advance as we will read out loud together on the day from:

Eli Clare, ‘Stones in my pocket, stones in my heart,’ in Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, 1999

Clare’s essay, together with others in the FDRG Masculinities series, can be found here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1v-WEIA0CkKbLewyOak1o4kYLFP4Zi4Xs?usp=sharing

 To Register and Participate

If you would like to take part in this online reading group please email feministduration.com. The meeting will take place in a number of small online reading groups of c.eight people, where we will read out loud together. At the start and the end of the meeting all participants will join together to introduce ourselves and share our insights on the reading.

Helena Reckitt is grateful to Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz for introducing her to Eli Clare’s text.

The FDRG Masculinities focus is developed by Flora Dunster, Sabrina Fuller, and Helena Reckitt. It follows the group’s involvement in the public events programme for the ‘Masculinities’ exhibition at the Barbican, London.

Eli Clare, photo by Samuel Lurie