Short essays based on the authors life as a butch lesbian in small town Canada. Filled with warmth and humour. ( )

I really loved this collection of essays that grew out of Coyote's own experience. They were a neat window into their life and I like how they talk about experience. There was a gamut, certainly, and most of them include a couple of encounters that were not always immediately related for me - but someone reading slower might have a different experience.

Will be reading more by this writer! ( )

The Short and Sweet of It
Missed Her is a short, but moving, collection of personal stories focused on Coyote's experiences as a queer, butch, storyteller living on Canada's west coast. Each essay is succinct, powerful, and entertaining.

A Bit of a Ramble
Typically when I read a collection of short stories - whether fiction or nonfiction - a few stand out as favorites, a few as giant pieces of yuck, and the rest sort of blend into moderateness. Not so with this book. I really enjoyed every story in it, and Coyote set up each tale the way I like: sort of a blend between a short story and a personal essay. I think Amy from Amy Reads said it best: "Missed her is a collection of short stories that aren’t really, in my mind, short stories the way I think of them. They are more quick memories. A collection of stories about memories, perhaps."

Each chapter (story) is quickly told, just a few pages, but the memory it is relating, the story it is telling, is beautifully told despite the brevity (or maybe because of it). Jackie Wong from Straight.com believes that Coyote's "intimate storytelling seldom grows tired, and her wry, unadorned writing style is unique in its conversational simplicity." That conversational simplicity really stood out to me as one of the joys of the book.

One of the best things about this book is the delicate balancing act Coyote plays between making this an "issues" book and just a damn good collection of stories. Cass from Bonjour, Cass! says that "this collection captures a very important image of what it’s like to be a queer person in way that many GLBTQ novels have not been able to do because they so often focus on a sensationalized idea of what being a queer person means in a homophobic society." I couldn't agree more. The stories in Missed Her are not spectacle; they feel real, sincere, and entirely relatable. ( )

Acquired at 2010 SIWCon