Stones In My Heart By Eli Clare Summary

Stones in my Pocket, Stones in my Heart The author, Eli Clare, shares a portion of his life to the reader through “Stones in my Pocket, Stones in my Heart.” He starts off by telling that from a very young age he never felt like a girl nor a boy. Clare frequently reflects on the time that he asked his mother “Am I feminine?” As the reader, I felt as if this is a moment in which has been engrained in Clare’s memory. There is a specific reason that he continues to bring it up throughout the reading. By using repetition, Clare is attempting to emphasize the importance this specific interaction had on his life. Throughout the reading, Clare analyzes the strict rules that our society has made for femininity and masculinity. Our culture has made these ideas where gender should look a certain way and individuals should act a certain way. For Clare, his childhood was very difficult as he didn’t fit into these rules. He had a difficult time determining whether he was masculine of feminine. He didn’t understand how society determined you were a queer if you didn’t belong to either of the two sides.
He at times nearly caves in to this belief, but instead decides that this is just society attempting to gain control over him. Clare talks about how society has used child abuse to demonstrate power. He talks about how as a child he was raped by his father and how society has attempted to tell him that he is who he is because of the child abuse. He goes further into depth about the impact abuse on children has. As a young child, abuse at an early age can be very influential on the rest of their lives. By drilling into a young child’s brain the lessons of who is dominant and who is subordinate, society is attempting to maintain a power structure. As you can imagine, this form of maintaining power can be very