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Annotation by Helena Reckitt

The Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective’s anonymously authored book was amongst the texts that we read in the very first Feminist Duration Reading Group meeting , back in March 2015. Devised as a series of three reading groups in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, where I teach, I held these initial meetings as a means to explore the 1970s and 1980s Italian feminist movement: an inspiring body of thinking and practice that seemed woefully under-recognised in the Anglo-American feminist circles within which I moved. 

Alongside the Milan Women Bookstore Collective’s introductory chapter, ‘Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice,’ for that first reading group we read Antonella Nappi’s ‘Nudity’ (1973) and ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel,’ by Carla Lonzi. All three texts had been published in an issue of May Revue (06/Issue 4, 2010) dedicated to Italian feminisms, edited by Fulvia Carnevale.  Fulvia had spoken about Italian feminisms at a talk for the exhibition ‘Getting Rid of Ourselves’ that I curated at ONSITE Gallery in Toronto in 2014. I was bowled away by the movement she described, and indeed by the intellectual brilliance and personal dynamism of Fulvia herself, and wanted to learn more about its radical politics of non-assimilation and rejection of equal rights for women.

Mind-expanding though these initial readings were, it wasn’t until the end of that year, when I revisited the Bookstore Collective’s writing as part of a workshop organised by the artist Alex Martinis Roe, that their profound relevance for contemporary feminist group work truly hit home. Alex’s two-day workshop, ‘Our Future Network,’[1] centred on the feminist practice of affidamento (‘entrustment’). As Teresa de Lauretis explains in her introduction to Sexual Difference, affidamento is the process by which “one woman gives her trust or entrusts herself symbolically to another woman, who thus becomes her guide, mentor, or point of reference—in short, the figure of symbolic mediation between her and the world.”[2]

‘Our Future Network’ included an exercise inspired by affidamento. Alex invited participants (we were all, at the time, female-identified) to talk about a woman who had been an important figure of validation and inspiration in their lives. In pairs, we took turns speaking, uninterrupted, and listening. To enable a ‘psychoanalytic dispositif,’ Alex asked us not to face one another or to make eye contact. After this intensive period of speaking and listening, we were instructed to write up the other woman’s account in the form of a gift to them. As I’ve noted, workshop participants were then all female-identifying. In response to a question about how she worked with male-identified participants, Alex explained that she asked them to reflect on a relationship of affidamento between two women they know.

Following Alex’s workshop, the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective became a key reference for the FDRG, and their book one of our most cited resources. We have read from different chapters at meetings across the UK, including at SPACE Studios and the AntiUniversity in London, Grand Union in Birmingham, and Hypatia Trust in Penzance. Several contributors quoted from the book in the 2021 FDRG podcast on friendship and feminist organising, ‘Nothing Worth Doing is Done Alone.’  After Alex returned to London in 2018, where she led a workshop on feminist alliance-building, participants from that event  shared the tools they had learned at another FDRG meeting: a generative process of embodied citation.

Most striking to me in the practice of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective is their inbuilt recognition of power imbalances between women in the collective. In affidamento, de Lauretis explains, “both women engage in the relationship not in spite but rather because and in full recognition of the disparity that may exist between them in class or social position, age, level of education, professional status, income, etc.”[3]  This awareness of hierarchies within the feminist movement contrasts with the emphasis often made on sisterhood and collaboration. It brings to the surface, and attempts to make value from, the unacknowledged tensions that so often threaten feminist groups and lead them to implode.

A concept of theirs that I especially enjoy is the distinction between “the woman who wants and the woman who knows”.[4] This is an alliance that, the Bookstore Collective point out, men have historically feared and attempted to stop, preventing younger women from seeking older women’s company and counsel. Curiosity and desire are hardwired into this exchange, with its clear links to mentorship and teaching. Also present within the alliance are potential abuses of power, dangers that, as far as I recall, the Bookstore Collective does not dwell on.

As feminist groups expanded in the early 1970s during the heyday of the women’s movement, Bookstore Collective members became frustrated by what they saw as the stultifying effect of consensus and horizontality in their groups.  The same few women dominated discussions and decision making, while others became silent and passive. Their discovery of affidamento enabled the Collective to release the energy sparked by curiosity and desire, enabling these vital forces to become collective assets. No longer objects of patriarchal exchange, affidamento reoriented women as subjects of mutual symbolic reference and validation. By recognising their divergent knowledge, skills and experience, Collective members realised their own, and supported one another’s, potential. 

Another key tenet of the Bookstore Collective’s methodology is “the practice of doing,” which FDRG Working Group member Sabrina Fuller highlights in her annotation for Mundos Habitables. The practice of doing activates relations between women as they join forces to accomplish particular projects together. “Things,” they suggest, “are not like words; things occupy a limited space and time, leaving some space and time open to do yet other things. And in the process of doing, desire can assert itself with the greatest determination without denying the possibility of other desires, other choices.”[5]  Making things together creates an environment in which differences and disparities can be voiced without being either suppressed or resolved.

Both the ‘practice of doing’ and affidamento have become guiding principles for how I work with the FDRG.  I find the Bookstore Collective’s account of how mutual support enables members of a group to realise their potential particularly inspiring. One example of affidamento that they share is the relationship between the lesbian poets H.D. and Bryher.  They note that when doubts and fears that H.D. had about her writing might have held her back, “at the decisive moment” Bryher urged her to “go ahead.”[6]  Similarly, at the decisive moment, the FDRG gives me confidence to pursue my curiosities. Research discoveries and feminist methodologies that would probably have remained my private obsessions, or which I might not have found the time or the context to explore, become the catalyst for shared investigation.  

Within the context of the FDRG I see myself as both “the woman who knows and the woman who wants.”  As one of the oldest members of the group, I bring my experiences accrued during decades working as an institutional curator and academic. I also have access to a certain amount of institutional resources, methods, status and networks. While I consciously try to avoid succumbing to affidamento’s potential to fetishize status and power, by extending my energies towards supporting the interests and ambitions of others, I nonetheless do not hold back the skills I have (editing, writing, speaking, building institutional relationships). In this way I gain validation for activities that are conventionally valued, like writing and public speaking, as well as those of administration and relationship building that are more generally taken for granted.

Undoubtedly I get as much from other FDRG participants as I put in.  Thinking and researching with smart and engaged feminists from different generations who are tapped into current theoretical, artistic, and political developments, co-organising, conceptualising, and hosting, hearing the perspectives and insights of participants at FDRG events where people bring the precious gifts of attention and time: all these experiences create the grounds for the slow process of building mutual understanding and respect. At the decisive moment, the FDRG encourages me to go ahead.

[1] Organised as part of ‘Now You Can Go’ by me in collaboration with Angelia Bolletinari, Giulia Casalini, Diana Georgiou, Laura Guy, Irene Revell and Amy Tobin, across two weeks at the ICA, Raven Row, SPACE Studios, and The Showroom in London.

[2] Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice, Teresa de Lauretis, trans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, p. 8

[3] Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference, p. 8-9

[4] Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference, p.123

[5] Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference, p. 81

[6] Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference, p. 34

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Annotation by Sabrina Fuller

To those aware of the fragility of their existence in a male dominated society, that which collectives achieve - not only in terms of shared objectives and goals, but also the relationships which develop between women in the process, is of primary importance, above words of protest which leave women vulnerable to opposition and negation.

As a consequence, the text argues, many groups have devoted themselves to specific projects, which then in themselves create situations for the exchange of words, as well as ‘things, work and sexuality’. 

For me this text encapsulates, not only the revolutionary nature of how we worked together as feminists in the 1970s and 80s, but also the enduring strength and significance of the work of the Feminist Duration Reading Group, both to those involved in its organisation and to those who form part of its wider network. 

The theory behind the politics of doing was set out thus: that the specific unseen, material oppression of women, manifested, for example, in rape and violence against women, in housework, in economic oppression, in prostitution, cannot be transformed by changing public opinion through words. To be effective women need to create female social spaces and transform reality into one centred on women’s, rather than male, interests – a bringing together of the personal and the political, strengthening and valuing relationships between  women.

I’ve always formed enduring friendships and networks through working on shared projects. For me it has resulted in relationships based on mutual respect of each other’s contributions, so that the richness of difference can be celebrated.

Following that logic, this emphasis on women’s spaces and shared projects has never and should not inevitably mean the exclusion of trans women, themselves oppressed and excluded by the patriarchy.

FDRG Session: Libreria della Donne di Milano (Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective), Aug 11, 2015
FDRG Session: Now You Can Go

Feminist Duration began their three readings of Minor Detail three weeks after Hamas’s brutal October 7th2024 raid into Israel, which triggered an Israeli response which has destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure; killed of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, deprived those who survive of medical facilities and of food and water to point of famine. 

The section of the book that we read begins with a Palestinian woman’s fascination with the story of the rape and murder of a Palestinian girl, 25 years before her own birth. Shibli writes with vivid and unsparing detail about the anxiety experienced due to the everyday violence and humiliation meted out to Palestinians in the West Bank. Tension builds as the woman decides to explore and follow the story of the murdered girl. In detailing the journey to uncover archives to discover more, the reader is confronted with the history, geography and the current reality of the occupied West Bank. 

Minor Detail is a tough read and there are no happy endings. For me it brought alive the landscape, the context, and the reality of life for Palestinians, even before the beginning of the current conflict in Gaza, as well as the acceleration of illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and has acted as a spur to action. 

We read at short notice, with a sense of urgency. Although the readings were necessarily on-line there was a feeling of intimacy between those of us who took part in what felt like a witnessing and act of respect for those caught up in events in both the West Bank and Gaza. 

FDRG Session: Adania Shibli: Minor Detail, Reading 1, Oct 20, 2023
FDRG Session: Adania Shibli: Minor Detail, Reading 2, Nov 10, 2023
FDRG Session: Adania Shibli: Minor Detail, Reading 3, Nov 30, 2023

Elisabetta Bertolino is a friend of mine from Birkbeck School of Law and in 2008 she interviewed Adriana Cavarero at length. I liked running this session with Lucia. The interview the questions she asked Cavarero are really interesting, important and poignant. I went back to this interview several times when I was writing my PhD to read again and again what Cavarero said. In many points I always agreed with her and liked her approach. There is one point now in which she describes sexual difference - definitely not as a biological difference - which now after the publishing of her book Donne di nasce I find myself puzzled. I feel a bit cheated, like as if in her description of sexual difference she was going around and around the answer and now I feel I know why. She maybe wanted to be more direct, in her description of sexual difference, but did not dare to - maybe? I am very proud of Elisabetta for interviewing Cavarero and asking those questions. I suggest everyone to read the whole interview.

Sesión FDRG: Italian Feminisms and the Practice of Entrustment, Nov 2, 2017

Adriana Cavarero, ‘On the Outskirts of Milan,’ 1997, in Relating Narratives: Storytelling & Selfhood (first published in 1997, in Italian, English translation 2000)

Introduced by Lucia Farinati

In the FDRG meeting that I organised on Adriana Cavarero in  November, 2015, we read ‘On the Outskirts of Milan.’ In this essay Cavarero uses characters from the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective’s text 'Don’t think you have any rights.' When I led this session I was not aware that two "characters" used by Cavarero in this text, called Amalia and Emilia, were actually two real women who attended the course of 150 hours led by Lea Melandri in Affori (in the outskirts of Milan in the 1970s). Cavarero's reference of Amalia and Emilia was taken from the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective’s book 'Non credere di avere diritti' ('Don’t think you have any rights,' 1987, translated in 1990 as 'Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-symbolic Practice'). In a chapter of this book Amalia and Emilia's friendship serves to exemplify the theory of entrustment (affidamento) which is the core political practice of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective. When in January 2023 I interviewed Lea Melandri on the occasion of the event co-organised with Sara Paiola at the Italian Cultural Institute in London, I  discovered that there is no relationship of Amalia and Emilia with the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, neither with their theory of entrustment. Furthermore the omission (in both publications) of the name of Lea Melandri from Amalia and Emilia's account failed to recognise the vital work that was done by Melandri in the context of the courses of 150 hours and more importantly the establishment  of a new political practice that was named later by Melandri scrittura di esperienza (experiential writing). 

During the FDRG meeting in 2015 I introduced key concepts from the book by Cavarero 'For more than one voice 2005'[1]  in which she developed the notion of "vocal ontology of uniqueness'. I was very excited to share my understanding of Cavarero's  feminist methodology and  her take on Hannah Arendt’s notion of uniqueness. Ideas of embodied voice, "vocality" and resonance were key points of reference in my book 'The Force of listening' (2017) looking at the legacy of  consciousness-raising, and at the passage from the politics of voice to the politics of listening. One passage that was discussed at length  during the reading group was the difference put by Cavarero between "plurality" and "pluralism". My understanding was that Cavarero was challenging the issue of identity politics by introducing the notion of uniqueness, valuing voice as the result of plurality. Now, I see Cavarero's work under a different light as in her last book co-authored with Olivia Guaraldo 'Donna, si nasce (e qualche volta lo si diventa)', (2024) I feel that I must object to what seems like a radical return to essentialism in her work. This stance does not understand trans-feminism as  the embodiment of plurality but as a  gender ideology close to that of TERFs (Trans Exclusive Radical Feminists). I cannot accept this! And so, my dilemma now is how to save the good work done by Cavarero in the past and at the same time take distance from her current political stance.

[1] https://www.feministduration.com/blog/2018/12/10/adriana-cavarero.
The background reading for this session were Hannah Arendt, ‘The Disclosure of the Agent in Speech and Action,’ in "The Human Condition," 1958, pp. 175-181, and Adriana Cavarero, ‘The Reciprocal Communication of Voices,’ in "For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal eExpression," 2005, pp.197-212

FDRG Session: Adriana Cavarero, Nov 3, 2015

adrienne maree brown and Cara Page, ‘The Legacy of Uses of the Erotic,’ in "Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good" (Emergent Strategy):, 2019, pp29-41.

Annotated by Kezia Davies

The Legacy of Uses of the Erotic is a conversation between adrienne maree brown and Cara Page which forms a chapter of brown’s iconic book Pleasure Activism. The chapter follows Audre Lorde’s original text 'The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power'[1] and explores in depth how the text has echoed through their lives and their work. Re-reading now it’s clear that I was influenced by Page describing a series of political theatre performances she created when she was 21, which involved her being in conversation with Lorde, responding to specific quotes. This was maybe the first time I realised you were allowed to work with texts in this way. I found myself in academic circles where texts were studied with a sort of untouchable reverence, so who was I to respond to, let alone critique Audre Lorde?

I first read Pleasure Activism when I was 22, studying for an MFA and engaging in online sex work to support myself - what a cliche! Much of that time for me was spent feeling deeply conflicted between the texts I was reading and the work I was doing, often hiding my sex work from other feminists, and hiding my feminist values from other sex workers and clients. They felt diametrically opposed. Although Uses of the Erotic and brown and Page’s conversation on its legacies didn’t resolve the conflict I was feeling, they gave me the permission to explore it more fully. And while I was, at the time, deeply critical of Lorde’s anti-pornographic stance, with reflection I have gratitude for her giving voice to the conflict I was feeling. With that in mind I would like to share the following conversation between Uses of the Erotic and my tender, somewhat overly critical 22 year old self. This conversation was originally written for Beuverie en Commun, a night-long drinking party inspired by Plato’s Symposium and curated by Camille Bréchignac & Camille Houzé as part of ‘Something soft’ at Kunstraum, London, in 2019.

An exploration of the hierarchy of the erotic and the pornographic in Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic

The first time I read Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic I was in the bath. I felt the hot water and her words move around me and I felt something in me move deeply as she explained the erotic as a source of suppressed power.

“The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognised feeling”

I underlined this because it made me feel something, I experienced that same tingle as when you listen to a really good piece of music. You know that one that starts at the top of your spine and radiates throughout your whole body, translating that emotional pleasure into the physical. Perhaps simply reading this sentence tapped into that erotic power that Lorde so deeply explores.

“When I speak of the erotic then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.” Our work.

Our work.

Our work.

“There are frequent attempts to equate pornography and eroticism, two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual.”

I would argue that the pornographic and the erotic are not diametrically opposed. Far from it. There is a big murky overlap on the spectrum between the two.

Joe wants it to look like I’m making love to him, he tells me about his life and his loneliness and his desire for intimacy and I don’t tell him that he is looking in the wrong place. That I can only perform this intimacy. That it can never be truly authentic. That it will be lacking the erotic. I don’t tell him these things because I don’t believe them to be true.

“For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing”

So if we feel this sense of fullness, of satisfaction, of the erotic in our work, can our work not be pornographic? Or if our work is pornographic, can we never feel the fullness of the power of the erotic while we are doing it? Can a sex worker never truly feel this sense of the erotic in their work?

“pornography is the direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling”

Is this not then also true of acting? Or anything performative for that matter? Would you say that an actor cannot truly feel the words they are speaking? The pornographic can be a performative representation of this true feeling, and we can experience the full power of the erotic while creating it. And in this patriarchal capitalist society, making money from performing my eroticism is powerful. My body is a site of the redistribution of power.

“For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing”

Yes, the pornographic is what we do and what is produced, but that does limit how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing, or in the creating of it. The pornographic is not an empty performance of the erotic, nor a denial of true feeling, but is the representation and record of the erotic feeling itself.

“To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time… is to… allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, the absurd.”

To link the pornographic more closely to the abused than to the erotic is absurd. I can be conscious of what I am feeling while performing the pornographic.

“And there is for me no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love”

This sentence gave me that tingle again for I have also experienced the erotic joy of writing a good poem and moving into the sunlight against the body of a woman I love and it brought that sensation back to me emotionally and physically. But I have experienced this same intense feeling when creating work that Lorde would diminish as pornographic. And this isn't to say that it isn't pornographic, but that it is pornographic and erotic, performative and authentic, distant and intimate, all at the same time. It is multifaceted.

[1]  originally a paper presented at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mount Holyoke College, August 25, 1978, and was later published as a chapter in Sister Outsider. Copyright © 1984 Audre Lorde and The Crossing Press, a division of Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA

FDRG Session: NW FDRG: Audre Lorde, The Uses of the Erotic and its legacies, Dec 9, 2019

see pdf for annotations

FDRG Session: Letters to the Future, Jan 28, 2023.
In collaboration the Department of Feminist Conversations  (who also work, think and write as the collective Something Other). https://somethingother.blog/

From the book L’Infamia Originaria. (L’erba voglio), 1977

What a lovely evening this was! I had invited Lea Melandri to join an online discussion on her work. The date was during covid so we had to meet online. Lea, who does not speak English, needed to be translated and the live translation was a collective 'job'. Lucia Farinati, Richard Braude, Laura Malacart and myself translated Lea Melandri. The translation became something else, a collective translation/conversation. There were long sentences by Lea, us trying to catch up, someone else intervening with a better meaning or a word etc. It was fun! Lea was as entertaining as ever, clear, fun, direct, intelligent and articulate. A pleasure to listen and a pleasure to translate. Lea spoke about the 1970s and 1980s the fulcrum of Italian feminism, especially in Milan where she lived, her family, her childhood in Emilia Romagna, her studies, the speaking of different languages (Italian and dialect) the creation of groups and so on. An immersion into a slice of history.

FDRG Session: Lea Melandri in Conversation, Oct 21, 2021

see pdf for annotations

FDRG Session: Masculinities: Eli Clare, Stones in my pockets, stones in my heart, June 20, 2020

The contradiction that is never admitted, Kincaid tells us, is that perhaps every good thing that stands before us comes at great cost to someone else. My Garden grows from Kincaid’s deep knowledge of gardening: the plant names, their origins, and what to plant with what and where to inspire joy for no reason - a notion that she views with suspicion. 

Kincaid sets out gardening’s deep roots in colonialism – in the displacement and renaming of plants and of peoples. Feminist Duration read: ‘To Name is to Possess’ and ‘The Glasshouse’. In these two chapters Kincaid’s family and personal history is the weft woven into the warp of colonisation. That metaphor is grounded in the significance of cotton as plant and product – intrinsically linked to slavery, empire and exploitation. 

We read as we walked, rested and talked our way around London’s lovely St James Park. The shadow of the COVID pandemic hung over us, as did the shadow of the history of this royal park, its imported plant species and pelicans – and its lake, borders and boundaries shared with Buckingham Palace, the King’s official London residence. 

FDRG Session: Jamaica Kincaid: My Garden (book):, Jul 23, 2022

What a spicy text this is for collectives to think through, particularly collectives who want to work without hierarchy – the word I hear inside the word structure. Every time I read it I think: I’m not sure I relate to this, it feels so much of its time. And yet. 

How piquant it remains might best be articulated by telling you about two collectives I’m part of (all quotes are Freeman’s):

The first is a reading group of socialist theatre-makers, designed to inspire participants into organising and/or activism. When I joined, it was beginning to be programmed by a rotating group who wanted “the rules of how decisions are made” to be transparent and as inclusive as possible. Gradually that core became fixed, and a frustrating dynamic emerged. Although we aimed to work non-hierarchically, administrative tasks predominantly fell to the people in the group gendered female. Freeman’s essay became a reference point in the ensuing disagreement: men in the group wanted to be assigned tasks by a rotating chair, because only a chair could guard against the tyranny of structurelessness; women in the group wanted “distribution of authority among as many people as possible”, and for responsibility and accountability to be collective and active. The group collapsed into this impasse and remains there still.

The second is a mutual aid group active since the early days of the Covid pandemic. Many people come to the group seeking “structured, effective activity”, and we struggle with that, because often it feels as though what they’re actually asking for are small, easily defined volunteering tasks. We hope instead to absorb them into the group by attempting to follow Freeman’s directives: enabling “equal access to resources” and “access to information”; rotating tasks according to “ability, interest and responsibility”, while continually inviting people “to learn specific skills”. An “elite” has inevitably formed, of people who’ve been in the group longest and hold the most knowledge, and it’s been helpful to realise that we can’t work non-hierarchically: in fact, in claiming to do so, we’re “masking power”. What we can do is work anti-hierarchically, through a multiplicity of invitations, training sessions, communal activities, and above all by actively seeking “to develop those forms of organisation best suited to [the group’s] healthy functioning”, a series of trial and error experiments, each one bringing us closer to our goal of “solidarity, not charity”.

Sesión FDRG: Reading Conflict, Reading Solidarity: FDRG at 'Feminist Battlegrounds', Feb 21, 2025

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See pdf for annotations by Helena Reckitt

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Recommended by Sabrina Fuller

The first time I came across Sick Woman Theory was a quote (thanks to artist Taey Iohe) which, to paraphrase, said that care for ourselves and others is the most of radical anti-capitalist protests - honouring, supporting and empowering others’ vulnerability, fragility and precarity. I liked it so much that I chose it to conclude the 2021 podcast I was editing and conceptualising with Helena Reckitt, ‘Nothing worth doing is done alone: on feminism and friendship’.

Since then FDRG has read from Sick Woman theory several times in various contexts. It taught me that sickness is not weakness. It reminded me that it is institutional and structural elements of the world order itself that are making and keeping us sick.  It reinforces the effect on our minds and bodies of inequality, racism, prejudice and lack of access to health services.

Hedva challenges the invisibility of the sick and damaged and offers a radical kinship, an interdependent sociality and a politics of care.


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Recommended by Kezia Davies

"How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?"

I’ve come back to ‘Sick Woman Theory’ again and again at very different points throughout my life, and this quote’s impact has increased along with the impact of chronic illness and my ensuing commitment to radical care.

I first read it as an assigned text for a seminar, then during a pre-pandemic FDRG session, then, as sickness came to me, I read it multiple times alone in bed while recovering from surgeries, infections, and flare ups, and most recently I read it at a queer reading group session about bodies. This session was organised by a tender and fierce friend with whom I’ve stood arm in arm on picket lines, made endless radical zines, shared meals, and danced, and hugged, and cried. And this reading felt like a significantly different context from my first read. This time it felt like I knew community.

In a pre-pandemic and pre-disabled context the text felt significant but didn’t resonate with my own experience. Now when I read “Solidarity is a slippery thing. It’s hard to feel in isolation” I feel it in my bones. I’m writing this the day before the UK Parliament is due to vote on the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, and I’m reflecting on how the state fears the solidarity felt between those who have taken action. There was a period of time last year where I was legally banned from interacting with a friend due to allegedly “co-conspiring”, and it always brings me a little bit of joy to think that the solidarity between two chronically ill femmes was such a threat that we had to be isolated.

But back to Hedva’s question - how do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? Or how do you feel and practice solidarity if you are isolated? On my good days I’m still able to participate in public protest, even if it takes a few days to recover. There are plenty who do not have this privilege due to disability, incarceration, the threat of police brutality, impacts on immigration status or precarious labour, all of whom Hedva includes in their powerful closing definition of The Sick Woman. For too long have “radical” movements insisted that the most useful people are those who can throw the brick, without acknowledging those who do the care work. Not everyone can take a hammer to an arms factory, but when those who can form communities rooted in radical care with those who can’t, there is power.

To be sick is to be inherently anti-capitalist. As Hedva concludes “once we are all ill and confined to the bed… and there is no one left to go to work, perhaps then, finally, capitalism will screech to its much needed, long-overdue, and motherfucking glorious halt.”

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Recommended by Maddy Costa for the Department of Feminist Conversations

“Hope you’re well!” “Get well soon!” “Take care!” There was such thoughtlessness to how I wrote these phrases, in email after email, never really thinking about what was expected of wellness, of care. And then I read Hedva, and friends’ parents began to die, and friends themselves experienced a concatenation of illnesses, and peri-menopause crept into our lives, and this glib and breezy language was no longer sufficient.

Hedva fascinates and inspires because she writes towards the revolutionary potential of sickness, calling attention to how it “separat[es] life’s value from capitalist productivity”. Wellness is a tool of that productivity, and because it’s seen as “the default, as the standard mode of existence”, illness becomes its opposite, “temporary” – and when sickness is temporary, care is not normal”. What Hedva wants is to normalise collective care, because: “The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself.”

I remember reading Hedva in the FDRG circle and talking afterwards about reciprocal care as a lifelong endeavour: as a task of building new structures of intergenerational care to carry us through future decades. In particular, I talked about a friend who is his mum’s carer, but has no children of his own to take on this role for him. I see a responsibility, for myself and his other oldest friends, none of whom live in the same part of the country as him, to start building that alternative structure now. But two years have already passed since that discussion and the foundations are still to be dug.

FDRG Session: Collectivity & Care, Mayo 10, 2023
FDRG Session: What Do We Mean When We Talk About Care?, Mar 23, 2024

Tompkins writes about the world-making potential of critical feminist theory through a series of questions, knocking out compact, perfectly swishy assertions about what we owe to philosophical, embodied writing, without ever seeming to make a declaration at all. What an invitation it is to read her seemingly endless queries about why we read, why we read closely, why we read out loud together, and to marvel in her capacity to ask a question. (As a very helpful list of prompts embedded into the essay promises, one of the goals of the essay is to help the reader to also “Ask A Good Question About Theory That Will Provoke Conversation And Further Discussion From Your Colleagues.” It does not disappoint.)

That reading this text aloud with others only enriches it is of course the whole point. Tompkins’s style is effervescent, bubbling with references to José Muñoz, Hortense Spillers, Judith Butler, but also to the perils of teaching, of the emotional situation of the classroom, of the politics of citation. (As she writes, parenthetically, and seemingly off-handedly, but with the deadly aim of a historian , at the end of a paragraph: “Which is to say, dear reader, have you cited a woman of color today?”).

It is a text, in other words, that compels the reader to speak, and then to write, in turn. I have read it countless times now, alone but mostly in circles with other feminist thinkers, and always concluding with the exercise of writing, annotating and rewriting questions for one another: sometimes these are questions about feminism, and what we want from it. Sometimes they are about our own research and practice together. Each time, we exchange our provocations, carefully edit and re-draft them, and read them again, out loud to one another.

Tompkins’s text is, in this way, endlessly generative of its own network of citations. It shaped a six-month arc of programming for the Toronto-based feminist collective EMILIA-AMALIA, titled “How to Ask a Question”; inspired a writing workshop in London with the Feminist Duration Reading Group; and has launched countless graduate seminars and workshops that I have organized over the past decade (speaking of citations, I am indebted to the artist Allyson Mitchell for suggesting this essay to me at an event co-organized with her Feminist Art Gallery in 2017). A good question, Tompkins famously (in my mind) writes, moves us from “me-search” to research, and in so doing, “build[s] a bridge between you and your readers and interlocutors; invite them into your thinking, your discipline, your own presumptions. Be a good host.” To ask a question, to admit we might not know yet, is also a world-making act.

FDRG Session: Kyla Wazana Tompkins: We Aren't Here to Learn What We Already Know, April 4, 2017

From "Love and Violence: The Vexatious Factors of Civilization." 2011, English translation 2019.

I loved organising this reading group. I remember as a spontaneous, 'easy' event to organise. I had a passion for the work of Lea Melandri and really wanted to share some more of her work in the group. To organise it I searched my late mother's materials/archive and found some posters with black and white pictures of 1970s milanese feminists demonstrating or slogans etc. When I arrived I spontaneously put them on the floor in a circle in the room and put some other books and material. I then found my mother’s speculum and felt that the discussion of Lea Melandri's book on women's bodies, motherhood, patriarchy, violence could be counterbalanced with a discussion on how, from the 1960s onwards, some feminists learned to re-appropriate their bodies. The speculum served as a way to see their vulva - sometimes for the first time as adult women - using a mirror. For millenia in which in some cultures women's bodies had to be hidden in thick clothes, their sexuality serving mainly the aim of reproduction the discovery of being able to look at their vagina and vulva was very important and empowering. I feel the session was liked, there was an interesting discussion and several questions and the evening, and the conversation, carried on at a Vietnamese restaurant nearby.

FDRG Session: Lea Melandri, Love and Violence, Mar 6, 2018

The Arcana of Reproduction by Leopoldina Fortunati is a text I consider part of what might be called a militant feminist immaterial infrastructure. First published in Italian in 1984, it arrived after the dissolution of the Wages for Housework committees, yet it remains deeply rooted in the energies, tensions and political imagination that fuelled them. This ambitious and complex book reads like a repertoire of early analyses of social reproduction, offering a critical lexicon for understanding the structural conditions under which women’s labour—unwaged, affective, and reproductive—has been relentlessly exploited by capital.

Written during a period of global struggle against the sexual and racial division of labour, Fortunati challenges classical Marxism by placing reproductive and caring labour—particularly that of housewives and prostitutes—at the centre of capitalist production. In resonance with Mario Tronti’s Workers and Capital (1966), she extends the Marxist operaist critique, reinterpreting both the “casalinga” and the prostitute as key figures in the accumulation of capital. Their unwaged or poorly paid labour is shown to be essential to reproducing the male labour force and generating surplus value.

Fortunati argues that women’s domestic and sex work are not peripheral but foundational to capitalist reproduction—cheap, necessary sources of capital’s expansion. As she writes, the radical potential of feminist critique depends on its link to a struggle for women’s own income. Without money in women’s hands, the working class cannot exert autonomous control over reproduction. Today, more women may be waged—whether in factories, services, informal sectors or sex work—but this comes at the cost of an unlimited working day and intensified exploitation.

For this collection, we have included two brief but central chapters: “Reproductive Work is Productive” and “The Dual Character of Reproductive Work,” accompanied by an edited conversation between Leopoldina Fortunati and the activists and scholars Anna Curcio and Bruna Mura, moderated by Barbara Mahlknecht. Together, they reflect on the continued relevance of the demand for wages and the unfinished critique of reproduction.

FDRG session: Between Militant Demand and Creative Refusal: Moments of the Wages for Housework Campaign, June 2024

This meeting of the Feminist Duration Reading Group focused on the Icelandic women’s strike of 24th October 1975. Through readings from Marie Elizabeth Johnson’s chapter on this mass withdrawal of female labour – in which 90% of women participated, bringing the country to a standstill as schools, shops, nurseries and fish factories shut down or ran a half capacity, while men performed caring and domestic labour – we explored the contemporary potential for a gender strike. We also looked at how a radical gesture of withdrawal can be reframed by the more cautious language of celebration.

The session was inspired by the project ‘Speculations for a radical, feminist strike: workshop and experiment,’ which reflected on the Icelandic women’s action, forty years later. Exploring anti-work politics and practice, project researchers Valeria Graziano, Lynne Friedli, and Holly Pester asked, is a gendered strike still necessary (and/or possible) for trans and cis-gendered women and non-binary people today?

Together we read sections from ‘Kvennafridagurinn,’ chapter six of Marie Elizabeth Johnson’s 1984 PhD thesis Women in Iceland.

We read out loud, together.  

FDRG session: Icelandic Women's Strike of 24th of October, 1975, Nov 1, 2016

Pauline Oliveros’s ‘Tuning Meditation’ was first performed in 1981 at the Guggenheim Museum New York. Seventy-five singers, directed by William Duckworth, performed in the gallery’s spiral walkway for the premiere of Elaine Summers’s ‘Crows Nest.’

Forty-four years later, we returned to the meditation as part of the Feminist Duration Reading Group’s programme ‘Unbecoming Chorus: Reading, writing, and performance in two acts (with interruption).’   Featuring out loud reading, guided writing, and the creation of a polyphonic chorus, the event took place in July 2025 at the Oak Foundation Gallery at Goldsmiths CCA as part of the arts festival Deptford X.  The programme was organised by a group of nine female and non-binary collaborators, working as part of the ‘Auto’ collective.

‘Tuning Meditation’ provided a soft start to ‘ACT I / READ WRITE RETURN,’ which featured out loud group readings from queer, feminist and trans-informed texts that challenge and complicate binary and other essentialist understandings of identity and selfhood. We write two-three pages each from the work of Kathy Acker, Jay Bernard, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Sharon Hayes, Hesse K, Paul B Preciado, Sin Wai Kin, and Maud Sulter. Guided by writing prompts, participants then wrote on index cards - in some cases producing new writing, inspired by what they had read; in others, writing up quotes from the texts.

We repeated ‘Tuning Meditation’ at the start of ‘ACT II / AUTO POLYPHONY: Underlines and Echoes,’ from which we created a polyphonic chorus built through layered and looped spoken word.

In both instances, ‘Tuning Meditation’ helped create an atmosphere of careful attention and co-presence. The invitation to listen to the collective sound produced, and to think about how one’s contribution might either add to what is present, or produce something new, brought awareness to our commonalities as well as our differences. 

In our discussions beforehand we had wondered whether a cymbal or bell was needed, to signal the end of the meditation. In the end it wasn’t necessary: as some people became quiet, the room slowly, and without the need for direction, fell into a shared silence. As Oliveros notes in her Commentary: “End when everyone else does. It happens.”

FDRG session: Unbecoming Chorus: Reading, writing, and performance in two acts (with interruption), July 20, 2025.

"Healing is transformation, it’s becoming, it’s blooming, it’s being home and whole within one-self in order to be home and whole within our worlds."
- Tabita Rezaire 

This is a wonderful text to read out loud in a group, whether for a meeting that takes place in person or one held online. Rezaire proposes decoloniality as a path toward healing, fusing ancestral wisdom with contemporary urgencies. Written to be chanted, sung, and danced to, as much as to be read in conventional ways, it combines scholarly research with incantatory prose in a demonstration of syncretic thinking.  Originally published in an academic handbook, with its rhythmic use of repetition, it’s more of an artwork than a scholarly essay. 

I first encountered ‘Decolonial Healing’ in HEALTH, a book edited by the curator Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz. As well as including a section from the essay, Rodríguez Muñoz took Rezaire’s phrase “The wound is the land of healing” as the title for her book’s introduction. Rodríguez Muñoz’s description of the essay is evocative: 

an embodied critique of conventional lineages of scientific knowledge (medical, technological, epistemic) and a raw appeal against modern colonialism (of the land, mind and body). Mixing critique and prayers, the artist envisions ‘healing’ as a space for both aesthetic liberation and political action: to exorcise toxic internalised dynamics, to overcome transgenerational trauma, to reconnect with the land and collective consciousness.

Rodríguez Muñoz goes on to propose that her book’s readers take Rezaire’s concept “the wound is the land of healing” as “a navigational tool to engage with the texts selected: an ongoing search for language to convey the sense of alienation that may come with illness – the wound – and a space for nurturing care, shifting identities and conviviality – the land of healing.” (Rodríguez Muñoz, 2019, p.13)

We have read selections from ‘Decolonial Healing’ at two FDRG events. The essay is a bit long to be read in full, especially if combined with other texts or materials. We haven’t devoted an entire meeting to it but that would be a rewarding thing to do. 

The first time we read from it was during the Collectivity and Care meeting in May 2023. Our original plan to travel several hours, from London to Birmingham, to lead the session in person at Eastside Projects non-profit art gallery was scrapped, and we moved the meeting online, as several of the organisers were experiencing ill-health. The prospect of pushing ourselves beyond our capacities for a session focused on collective care struck us as more than a little ironic. Meeting online the voices of geographically-dispersed individuals connected across the Zoom boxes joining in a technologically-mediated chant. It was one of the most powerful and memorable events that we have held; certainly one of the most effective online.

We read again from ‘Decolonial Healing’ the following year when the FDRG led the session ‘What Do We Mean When We Talk About Care?’ as part of the symposium for the feminist art exhibition ‘Women in Revolt’ at Tate Britain.  In this context reading Rezaire together felt more complicated.  I remember feeling that there was something rather ‘off’ about a group of predominantly white women declaring phrases like “This is our work against coloniality,” especially given that we were doing so in a stuffy, unventilated room at Tate Britain, that quintessential colonial art institution.  In this context some of Rezaire’s phrases really rang true: “We have internalized so many toxic and harmful mechanisms of being and living, so to not reproduce how these mechanisms have wounded us, we need to unlearn them and let them go.“  

Despite some of the awkwardness I experienced during this meeting, Rezaire’s incantatory language nonetheless created a sense of commonality amongst participants.  Reading aloud, our voices meeting in spiralling waves and rhythms, it felt like we were casting a spell.

FDRG Session: Collectivity and Care, May 10, 2023
FDRG Session: What Do We Mean When We Talk About Care?, Mar 23, 2024

Trinh T. Minh-ha’s ‘Grandma's Story’ feels like a manifesto for the FDRG. It weaves words and stories from other texts, by writers we have read in the group, Theresa Hak Kung Cha and Clarice Lispector, as well as others that we haven't (yet): Maxing Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, Zora Neale Hurston. Spinning stories and citations, it is a both reflection on and a  performance of the embodied process of telling and transmitting stories across generations.

Images and quotes are included from Trinh's own experimental films.  Her practice of working 'in proximity' to others is one that we explored in two FDRG sessions, one focused on reading, the other on Trinh's films, led by Dot Zhian Jia back in 2021.

What Trinh says about the experience of reading with others resonates with me strongly. She describes  "the irresponsibility of the pleasure gained through the process of transferring." This captures the pleasure I take in reading aloud during FDRG meetings: the feeling that we are putting words into the world through the resonating pulses of our own voices, breath and minds.

Trinh understands that it is not just about writing and listening to stories, but about the process of reciting amongst others. "To produce their full effect, words must, indeed, be chanted rhythmically, in cadences, off cadences."

She writes of "repetition in re-creation (and vice versa)." 

Trinh understands the body's capacity to take in a certain amount of information. "On distributing the story into smaller proportions that will correspond to the capacity of absorption of our mouths, the capacity of vision of our eyes, and the capacity of bearing of our bodies."

This brings to mind how, in FDRG events, we often don't get to the end of the chosen reading. Or we skip to the end and miss out pages of text. It’s not about how much we read together, I like to think, but the quality of the reading and the conversations and exchange produced.

"The world's earliest archives or libraries were the memories of women. Patiently transmitted from mouth to ear, body to body, hand to hand. In the process of storytelling, speaking and listening refer to realities that do not involve just the imagination. The speech is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. It destroys, brings to life, nurtures.  Every woman partakes in the chain of guardianship and of transmission."

FDRG Session: Trinh T. Minh-ha on Storytelling and Postcoloniality, P1, May 25, 2021
FDRG Session: Writing Yourself In: FDRG in ‘Concrete Garden: Imagining Worlds’, Feb 9, 2025

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live

Promesa de mayo: cantamos para morir | y vivir*
May 15-20, 2022
San Juan, Puerto Rico

This text was part of a collection of readings selected for a program organised by Jorge González Santos together with La Germinal by Mónica Rodríguez, with support from Escuela del Bosque, Raquel Torres Arzola.

Over the course of one week in May 2022, each afternoon from 6 to 9pm gatherings of weaving, reading aloud and song were held in Jorge's workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each session was dedicated to a theme—rhythm / sun / earth / body / sisterhood, weaving together fibers and voice.

The program included the participation of master craftsman and pilgrim Rafael Trinidad, accompanied by Alex Hernández Beleval and Karen Grullón.

*May promise: we sing to die and live