The Fires We Feel

The Fires We Feel is a historical prose piece that aims to document the experiences of lesbians, transmasculine, and gender non-conforming people in 1969 and 1970. Situated narratively between two pivotal moments of queer history in Greenwich Village—the Stonewall Riots and the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March—this piece offers an examination of the untold, or otherwise absent, participation and impact of lesbians during notable queer social movement. Utilizing sparse information from first-hand accounts and researchers, the piece developed into one that highlights (a) lesbian experience—while not centered in queer suffering. Rather, the piece thrives on queer joy to spark conversations and questions about why these experiences were left untold. It moves to enter a discussion about the absence of lesbian, transmasculine, and gender non-confirming people in the archives, and to begin the process of creating an archive in which these experiences are included automatically: not as an asterisk or footnote in the margins.