Raven Smith’s first book, “Raven Smith’s Trivial Pursuit,” came out early during the Covid lockdown, leaving him “at home with nothing but my thoughts for company”.

Those thoughts turned to what his second book might be, and Smith told his husband that he wanted to write about the men in their life.

So his new book is titled “Raven Smith’s Men” and includes chapters on various men his life has intersected with, including his father and his step-father.

“People really responded to the chapter about my step-dad. I just wrote it and moved on,” he told Dr Sarah Godfrey, an associate professor in the University of East Anglia’s School of Art, Media and American Studies, during the last UEA Live event of the spring series.

Each chapter discusses a particular man, although there are also individuals who get just a brief mention.

“One of my mum’s boyfriends is a footnote, and he’s probably not even in my mum’s memoir. He had these weird shoes and then he was gone,” said Smith, breaking into laughter.

He said another person in the book had “ghosted” him after their relationship ended. This was an “immensely powerful” thing to do to someone such as Smith who, he admitted, “likes attention”.

One chapter had to be edited to ensure that it was not libellous. Smith had thought that he could write pretty much whatever he wanted about a person, as long as that individual was not named.

In reality, the lawyers told him, the bar is set much lower, and it is crucial that, if potentially libellous comments are made, that a person cannot be identified even by someone who knows them. So tweaks were made to the copy.

Given its subject matter, it is no surprise that Smith’s book touches on issues linked to masculinity, including “toxic masculinity”. But when writing about his step-father, Smith said he showed that men could also be “gentle and kind and caring”.

Smith’s own relationship with masculinity is not straightforward. He said that being a man was “like a club that I don’t really have the keys to” and the thing he hated most when growing up was “not quite belonging”. Race, as well as Smith’s perceptions of his own masculinity, played a part in this.

“Living with my white mum, but I wasn’t white. Seeing my black dad, but I wasn’t black. Hanging out with men, but not really being like them. Hanging out with women, but not being a woman,” he said.
Society, he said, continues to champion “male attributes” such as power and dominance, while it does not “spend anything on care”.

“There will never be this time when masculinity is all tied up,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll ever get to a place where we understand why people behave the way they do, but we can get to a place where people are kinder.”

Smith said it was not bad to be a man, but it was bad to let being a man limit the way a person can live. While saying a person could be whatever they wanted to be, he added that there was also “biological stuff”.

“I’m intelligent-ish; I think about things; I care about people; And I still have this pre-existing programming that makes me a horny Neanderthal,” he said.

“I don’t think I can break the framework. I don’t think we, in a lifetime, can see the patriarchy dissolved.”

For the future, Smith feels “very family oriented” and his goals “are about offspring and getting something out into the future”.

“Trying to not just self-express, even though I absolutely adore it. Is there a way of doing something outside of serving myself?” he said.

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