Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Vancouver : Arsenal Pulp Press, c2011.
Description
"Persistence is a raucous, insightful, sexy, and sometimes dangerous look at what the words butch and femme can mean in today's ever-shifting gender landscape, with one eye on the past and the other on what is to come."--P. [4] of cover.
User reviews
LibraryThing member CaseyStepaniuk
Edited by the impressive team of Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman (an adorable married couple—I would suggest searching them in google images as soon as you read this), the collection Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (2011) certainly does live up to its name. It’s refreshing to see an
While I appreciated the diversity of the takes on butch and femme (and all in between), especially those that discussed the identities in relation to ability, race, size, and class, I thought Persistence was a bit uneven in terms of generation. Joan Nestle, the editor of the groundbreaking The Persistent Desire: A Butch-Femme Reader published in 1992, writes the foreword for Persistence and she declares that the book represents “the voices of another generation, of other cultural positions, new possibilities of gender discourse, and erotic adventuring” in comparison to her collection. I was expecting, then, a butch-femme collection comparable to S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, which I’ve recently read and enjoyed: a collection of more recent voices. There are, however, a few contributors to Persistence that are of Nestle’s rather than Coyote and Sharman’s generation (Jewelle Gomez and Jeanne Córdova are two). This imbalance confused me: the effort on Coyote and Sharman’s part to pay tribute to femmes and butches before them and to Nestle in particular is an admirable act, but there weren’t enough voices of older generations in their anthology to construct a kind of inter-generational dialogue. The few writers who are queer elders just seemed a bit out of place and underrepresented. Also in terms of diversity, it would have been nice for the anthology to have a wider range in terms of genre: most of Persistence is personal essays. The few fiction and poetry pieces were a welcome change and I wished there were more of them! Something graphic would have been pretty awesome too (maybe I should have emailed Alison Bechdel when the call for submissions came out). These reservations aside, if you’re butch, femme, or feel your gender is either both or neither, I’d highly recommend Persistence to invigorate, infuriate, and astound you—whatever you’re in the mood for.
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anthology reflect an impressive diversity of perspectives on these two loaded concepts and identities. I thoroughly enjoyed some pieces by queer writers I already liked, such as S. Bear Bergman, Ivan E. Coyote, and Amber Dawn and discovered some whose work I definitely plan to explore further: Zoe Whittall, Anne Fleming, and Bevin Branlandingham. Whittall’s “A Patch of Bright Flowers,” a butch-femme romance story, is an exceptional contribution: it’s endearing and cynical, sweet and rough, all at the same time. Dawn’s exploration of the impact that sex work has had on her relationships, constructed as a letter written to all the butches she loved “between 1995 and 2005,” is heartbreaking but also gorgeous and eventually hopeful. Branlandingham investigates and unpacks the idea of femme women’s so-called high maintenance; she challenges queer folks to think about anti-femme bias in queer communities and its links to misogyny. Bergman, whose writing is always turning masculinity around in queer circles, writes of the nuances of trans men and butches and how poly relationships are different with husbands and with boyfriends. Fleming’s essay eloquently moves between different moments in her butch childhood and adolescence, finally settling on the intricacies of her gender identity and parenthood: she’s “a dad called mum.” And of course there’s Ivan Coyote, who writes a beautiful, tear-jerker of a tribute to femmes called “Hats Off” that ends the collection; if you don’t already know and love her work, well, what kind of a queer are you??While I appreciated the diversity of the takes on butch and femme (and all in between), especially those that discussed the identities in relation to ability, race, size, and class, I thought Persistence was a bit uneven in terms of generation. Joan Nestle, the editor of the groundbreaking The Persistent Desire: A Butch-Femme Reader published in 1992, writes the foreword for Persistence and she declares that the book represents “the voices of another generation, of other cultural positions, new possibilities of gender discourse, and erotic adventuring” in comparison to her collection. I was expecting, then, a butch-femme collection comparable to S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, which I’ve recently read and enjoyed: a collection of more recent voices. There are, however, a few contributors to Persistence that are of Nestle’s rather than Coyote and Sharman’s generation (Jewelle Gomez and Jeanne Córdova are two). This imbalance confused me: the effort on Coyote and Sharman’s part to pay tribute to femmes and butches before them and to Nestle in particular is an admirable act, but there weren’t enough voices of older generations in their anthology to construct a kind of inter-generational dialogue. The few writers who are queer elders just seemed a bit out of place and underrepresented. Also in terms of diversity, it would have been nice for the anthology to have a wider range in terms of genre: most of Persistence is personal essays. The few fiction and poetry pieces were a welcome change and I wished there were more of them! Something graphic would have been pretty awesome too (maybe I should have emailed Alison Bechdel when the call for submissions came out). These reservations aside, if you’re butch, femme, or feel your gender is either both or neither, I’d highly recommend Persistence to invigorate, infuriate, and astound you—whatever you’re in the mood for.
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LibraryThing member caedocyon
Sooooo damnnnnnn gooooood! Very grateful to have picked this up at the library tent at Pride, otherwise it would have languished on my to-read list for a lot longer.
As with any book of essays, some are better than others. A few random favorites (and these are mindblowingly good!): Amy Fox, Amber
That's basically the end of the review. I have really intense, personal feelings about a lot of these essays, which is not really review-fodder. But damn I appreciated finding this book. You might, too.
As with any book of essays, some are better than others. A few random favorites (and these are mindblowingly good!): Amy Fox, Amber
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Dawn, Chandra Mayor. Jeanne Cordova's was probably the most disappointing and frustrating: for some reason, she thought it would be a good idea to make a linear scale on which to organize all the gender terms she knew.That's basically the end of the review. I have really intense, personal feelings about a lot of these essays, which is not really review-fodder. But damn I appreciated finding this book. You might, too.
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Awards
Lambda Literary Award (Finalist — 2012)
Stonewall Book Award (Honor Book — Non-Fiction — 2012)
ALA Over the Rainbow Book List (Selection — Essays — 2012)
Language
Original publication date
2011
Physical description
312 p.; 23 cm
ISBN
9781551523972
Other editions
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Ivan Coyote (Paperback)
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