Femme Friday – Raechel Anne Jolie and her memoir Rust Belt Femme

I just, just, just started it and am already captivated by Raechel’s beautiful writing and honesty. She starts off with a quote by Mykel Johnson, who I knew back in the day when we did anti-racism for white women work together and also from her wonderful contribution to Joan Nestle’s The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, “Butchy Femme”:

To be femme is to give honor where there has been shame.

Raechel goes on to write,

“This book about my deep love of the soil and sky that comprises Northeast Ohio is actually a book about my deep love of the soil and sky that comprises stolen Iroquois land. I am indebted to the work of indigenous activists and healers who have taught me to remember this and name it as often as I can, and more than that, to find ways to reduce the harm of the presence of white colonizers on this land. During the writing of this book, I began making monthly donations to the Committee of 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance, a grassroots 501 (c)(3) in Cleveland dedicated to maintaining indigenous culture and heritage.”

Already I’m teary and filled with love for Raechel’s work, and then I start in with the Prologue and am accompanying, with great interest and hope, the child Raechel’s forays down to the crick to find treasure and fireflies.  

Deep gratitude to Raechel for her fortitude in writing this queer femme memoir, a gift to all femmes, and for her dedication to intersectional understandings of the world, where healing grows.

P.S., I found this book at All She Wrote, a feminist bookstore in Somerville, Mass. – if you are able, I hope you also buy your copy from a local independently owned bookstore. All She Wrote is also happy to send you books, if you’d like to buy it from them:

https://www.allshewrotebooks.com/

Every Friday, I showcase a queer femme goddess. I want to feature you! Write to me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com and let me shine a spotlight on your beautiful, unique, femme story! If you’ve written a femme story or poem or song, oh, please let me post it!

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”) And…as I go through graduate school and life life life, I will post as I am able, Mabel.

Published in: on August 20, 2021 at 9:08 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Femme Friday – Apocalypse, Darling by Barrie Jean Borich

Queer femme Barrie Jean Borich’s latest book, Apocalypse, Darling, is a sumptuous read, loosely structured around a wedding she and her spouse attended in Indiana, but encompassing so much more: growing up in the industrial landscape of Illinois and Indiana; the effect of industry on landscape and heartscape; being queer and femme in the Midwest (and in the world); not to mention a conversation and continuation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”.

Barrie Jean was a Femme Friday femme a while back, and I am honored to feature a sample of her work today. Congratulations on your beautiful book, Barrie Jean. Deep gratitude!

(Barrie Jean and her spouse, Linnea, are meeting the bride’s sister for the first time.)

Well hello, Linnea enunciates, as the lady leans closer. You must be the lady, she says, of the house. Linnea possesses the social charm to pull off phrases like lady-of-the-house without sounding foolish.

The lady blinks at Linnea’s cropped gray hair – the same cut as usual, nearly a crew cut. She had it trimmed by her favorite barber before we left Minneapolis. The lady blinks as Linnea continues. I’m the groom’s daughter. She is practically shouting at the blinking lady, who clutches her cocktail, who blinks and stares again at Linnea’s bristled hairline.

… 

This lady’s smile is wide and static. We know this one. We’ve seen this before, though not so much lately as we did in the old days. She must not understand why this smiling man has introduced himself as a daughter. She has that look of one hypnotized by thunder. Linnea’s arm is outstretched. The lady speaks without parting her teeth.

I don’t know, says the lady, what we’re talking about here.

— Apocalypse, Darling by Barrie Jean Borich, Ohio State University Press, 2018.

Every Friday, I showcase a queer femme goddess. I want to feature you! Write to me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com and let me shine a spotlight on your beautiful, unique, femme story! If you’ve written a femme story or poem or song, oh, please let me post it! New Femme Friday feature starting fall 2018: Books from which queer femmes can draw inspiration. What are your trusted sources of light and love? Please share!

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published in: on October 25, 2019 at 5:42 PM  Leave a Comment  
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