No doubt about it, Tristan Taorino’s new anthology “sometimes she lets me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica” is hot! My review copy came in the mail last Saturday afternoon right as my partner and I were preparing to head to the airport for a much needed vacation----needless to say this made for some very fun airport reading!

I knew ‘sometimes she lets me’ was going to be a winner when I read Tristan’s introduction which succeeds in defining what Butch/Femme means better than anyone I’ve ever seen, and certainly better than I am capable of:

“Butch/femme is bulging jeans, smeared lipstick, stiletto heels, and sharp haircuts. It’s about being read and being seen. Sometimes it’s about passing or not passing. It’s about individual identity and a collective sense of community. It’s personal, political. It’s performance and it’s not. It’s the visceral space between the flesh and the imagination.”

One of the things that I love best about this book are the pieces that don’t turn me on (I know sounds crazy when reviewing an Erotica book). One of the biggest strengths in this book is that the anthology is incredibly diverse, having everything from butch on butch to femme on femme, femme tops, butch bottoms, switching, and of course my personal favorite some hot dominant butch takes submissive femme all thrown into 226 of the hottest pages I’ve read in quite some time.  I adore that the book doesn’t give privilege any one way of negotiating butch & femme identities separately or in relation to each other. Instead, it gives space for the sexy diversity that is our little corner of the queer universe.

The quality of the writing is also superb and contains the work of more than a couple of my favorite writers, with a special shout out to Toni Amato of Write Here, Write Now whose writing blew me away.  This is one of those books that to me goes beyond good one-handed reading (not that there is anything wrong with that) and into the category of great writing.  Butch/femme dynamics are by their nature sexually charged, and so it makes sense that it’s through beautifully crafted explicit sexual writing that we can learn more about ourselves, our dynamics, and our community as a whole.

if you’re a femme author, artist or zinester I’d love to review your work for the site! If you’re interested, please shoot me an email at Sassafras@PoMoFreakshow.com

Latest posts by Sassafras

• Farewell - May 1st, 2011
• Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme - April 16th, 2011
• Little Red Writing Dress - March 27th, 2011
• Unexpected Butch/Femme Poetry - March 22nd, 2011
• Tell-tale Signs a Queer Femme is Queer - March 4th, 2011