This book is a collaboration between visual artist and gender theorist Del LaGrace Volcano and the Swedish ethnographer and femme-inist activist Ulrika Dahl. It examines queer femininity in theory and practice. Meet 60 femmes and other queer feminine figures from twelve cities in seven different countries.
Publisher’s description:
What is femme? THINK YOU KNOW? French for woman? A feminine lesbian? A queer girl in a frock? Think again! Going beyond identity politics and the pleasures of plumage, Femmes of Power is a photographic tribute to a diverse range of queerly feminine subjects whose powerful and intentional redress explodes the meaning of femme for the 21st-century. Celebrating the growing femme presence in a dozen European and North American urban queer communities, here you will meet, members of London’s Bird Club, Atlanta’s Femme Mafia, San Francisco’s Harlem Shake Burlesque and Paris’s Fem Menace. Femmes of Power features both everyday heroines and many queer feminist icons, including Michelle Tea, Virginie Despentes, Amber Hollibaugh, Itziar Ziga, Lydia Lunch, Kate Bornstein and Valerie Mason-John.
The first book of its kind, Femmes of Power is a collaboration between renowned visual artist and gender theorist Del LaGrace Volcano and the Swedish ethnographer and femme-inist activist Ulrika Dahl and the subjects of the book. It unsettles the objectifying ‘male’ gaze on femininity and presents femmes as speaking subjects and high-heeled theorists. Look closer – these powerful, sexy and sincerely ironic feminine figures are larger than life, bravely challenging femininity’s negative connotations and replacing femme invisibility with a fresh new face for femme-inism.
Currently available only in the UK.
amazon.co.uk for preview
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COMMENTS / 2 COMMENTS
fiercefabfemme spoke on Sep 11 08 at 6:33 pmhey there! CreativeXicana here..
Although this book looks amazing, I just wonder where the representations of QWOC, especially QWOC femmes are in these types of books/spaces? I see a couple in the women that are mentioned in the book, but it seems to me as if they are only ’sprinkled’ in…but I digress, I just see a lot of QPOC butches/andro/boi’s being talked about critically/theoretically..but somehow I just can’t seem to find the femmes…
blessings,
Laura Lunap.s. If you have any books, articles, journals about QWOC femmes that I have maybe missed…would love to get a list??
[Reply]
whatilike spoke on Sep 13 08 at 2:16 amhi!
I saw the book and was like “Ooo, a new book on femmes! Honestly I was thinking this book had better representation than normal since the intro-poem was written by a stud, and the next few pages showed WOC. I don’t have the book, so I’ll take your word for it. For books, hmm…as you said QWOC femmes are mainly here and there in books about Femmes.
Looking through my LibraryThing list (where I like to compile all the books I can find on femmes and butches…61 right now)…I don’t see any that speak mainly to QWOC femmes.
I guess this highlights why most times I feel so out there alone floating trying to figure out how I’m going to do this. So far I have taken the ’sprinklings’ of WOC femmes in books aimed at femmes, and looked at the critiques white femmes have made.
I think a book on QWOC femmes who look at and speak about their identities would be really cool and useful though.There could be a number of reasons why there aren’t as many QWOC femme resources: POC having less resources to do something like that, femme is just one other thing in an entire list of “Other” identities: poor/working class, Native American, woman, immigrant (non-American), etc. I guess also, being femme or stud/butch in many QPOC communities is just called “being a lesbian.” It is more normalized than in white queer ones, thus there isn’t this ache to burst out with “Butch-Femme isn’t wrong! Here’s how I see my identity…” in response to (historically white) lesbian-feminism.
But that’s just my theory.Off to search for some QWOC femme stuff…
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