Closed on Sunday & Monday
Free Admission

Brighton CCA

A new centre for
contemporary arts at the
University of Brighton

This event is part of Flo Brooks

Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg’s 1993 first novel, is widley considered in and outside the US as a groundbreaking work about the complexities of gender. Feinberg was the first theorist to advance a Marxist concept of “transgender liberation”.

“Like my own life, this novel defies easy classification. If you found Stone Butch Blues in a bookstore or library, what category was it in? Lesbian fiction? Gender studies? Like the germinal novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe/John Hall, this book is a lesbian novel and a transgender novel—making ‘trans’ genre a verb, as well as an adjective . . .” – Leslie Feinberg

“[With] this novel I planted a flag: Here I am—does anyone else want to discuss these important issues? I wrote it, not as an expression of individual ‘high’ art, but as a working-class organizer mimeographs a leaflet—a call to action . . .” – Leslie Feinberg 

Leslie Feinberg identified as “an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female,revolutionary communist…” Zie wrote both non-fiction and fiction books, including Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, 1996, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, 1999, and Drag King Dreams, 2006. Leslie preferred to use the pronouns she/zie and her/hir for hirself. 

This is a reading group where we will read aloud together. Selected sections of the text have been chosen in relation to the rural and will be sent in advance. Everyone is invited to read but there is no obligation if you would prefer to listen. There will be time after reading to share reflections and thoughts. 

The book is available to download for free online.

The text above references lesliefeinberg.net 

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