A rich, broad collection. Some of it's aged poorly, some of it feels exceptionally prescient. Not quite my gender(s) for the most part, but definitely some good folks in the general neighborhood. It's good to know your neighbors, everyone.
I started listing out favorite pieces but it got long enough that it stopped feeling entirely useful as an endeavor, which is a pretty positive note. ( )

Sooooo damnnnnnn gooooood! Very grateful to have picked this up at the library tent at Pride, otherwise it would have languished on my to-read list for a lot longer.

As with any book of essays, some are better than others. A few random favorites (and these are mindblowingly good!): Amy Fox, Amber Dawn, Chandra Mayor. Jeanne Cordova's was probably the most disappointing and frustrating: for some reason, she thought it would be a good idea to make a linear scale on which to organize all the gender terms she knew.

That's basically the end of the review. I have really intense, personal feelings about a lot of these essays, which is not really review-fodder. But damn I appreciated finding this book. You might, too. ( )

Edited by the impressive team of Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman—an adorable married couple (see photo below)—the collection Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (2011) certainly does live up to its name. It’s refreshing to see an anthology reflect a remarkable diversity of perspectives on these two loaded concepts and identities. It’s exactly what you’d expect from the Vancouver-based Ivan—a storyteller and writer—and Zena—a radical government bureaucrat and gender researcher, and from the fantastic queer-friendliest publisher Arsenal Pulp Press.

See the rest of my review at my blog: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/239/ ( )