You may be thinking, what's this all about, why put the time and energy into cataloging writing by and about femmes/queer femininity? Well to begin, for me, coming out as femme involved a lot of reading (as I'm sure it has for many). As an early twenty-something who didn't yet identify as queer, I found femme by picking up a copy of Brazen Femme, and suddenly the world seemed to make a little more sense. And from there on in, I've tried to consume everything written about femme that I can find. And it hasn't always been easy. Well, some of it has. There are the femme icons that every femme knows--Joan Nestle, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Dorthy Allison, Amber Hollibaugh, Jewelle Gomez. And there are the seminal (can i say femme-inal?) texts, like Brazen Femme that most of us have read.
But, as a grad student who's work focuses on queer femininity, I've found that beyond those big names and texts, writing on femme is (somewhat) plentiful, but it's hard to find. There are a lot of brilliant people writing about femme and queer femininity, but the work is scattered. You can find an article here, a chapter there, but it takes a lot of google searching and journal browsing. So, I thought, wouldn't it be lovely for other bookish femmes like me to have a database they can go to, a one-stop list of femme resources that provides you at a glance with all the femme wordiness you can handle and leaves you with more time to actually read? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
So that's the why.
So, here it is. Well, somewhat. I call this whole thing a project because I envision it as an on-going endeavour--I'll be continuously updating the bibliography to reflect any new resources I come across, working to organize those resources into as useful a manner as possible, and (eventually) I plan to annotate each entry, again, to increase the utility of the bibliography.
The how is fairly simple--I've compiled the resources I'm aware of into one big bibliographic list that's organized under a few headings to make it a bit more navigable. You'll find those lists (browseable and downloadable pdfs) over at The Bibliographies page. Now, I call this whole thing a project because I envision it as an on-going endeavour--I'll be continuously updating the bibliography to reflect any new resources I come across or that other folks suggest, working to organize those resources into as useful a manner as possible, and (eventually) I plan to annotate each entry to increase the utility of the bibliography. So, you'll want to check back every once in a while.
And, while I take responsibility for any shortcomings (and there are many right now!), I do welcome any suggestions that folks might have (either additional titles or organizational ideas). I do very much want this bibliography to become an interactive project that reflects the literary, intellectual, and erotic interests of a diversity of femmes and femme allies. So, please please please email me with your ideas: the.bookishtype@yahoo.com
Finally, as briefly discussed above, my hope is that one day I'll be able to annotate this bibliography. And in line with my aforementioned dreams of collaboration, I do think it'd be absolutely wonderful if that could become a group project, with a bunch of enthusiastic folks writing up annotations that can be compiled together. So if you'd be interested in that, again, please please please email me!
All for now,
your friendly bibliographer,
the bookish type
No comments:
Post a Comment