Dykette: A Novel

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Of course the racial dynamics were shitty, but I didn't come to this book expecting a nuanced conversation about American racial dynamics.

Through Sasha, Davis constructs a field guide to queer dynamics, making sharp observations about generational divides, the butch/femme dynamic, and what it means to perform your gender or sexuality (as exemplified by an explosive plot about performance art). You won’t soon forget Sasha, nor any of the other larger-than-life Brooklynites in her cohort.”During a conversation about who will care for them when they all get old, Jesse remembers that the lesbian filmmaker Phoebe Livingston’s friends signed up in shifts to give her sponge baths when she was dying. “So you think you’ll have a band of young devotees to take care of you?” Jules asks. “What about when they have partners, though, and kids?” Miranda cuts in: “Being partnered doesn’t necessarily mean there’s someone to take care of you.” With all that said, ultimately I could not tell if this was a book that is trying to skewer the performance of aesthetics or if it is trying to celebrate them. I did not like any of these characters, which is fine. But Sasha and her constant need to be admired, to be petted and coddled, is exhausting. It is hard to say whether Darcy, Sasha's rival, is actually more genuine or if she is putting it all on as much as Sasha is, much to Sasha's chagrin. It is rather fascinating to see the two of them try to one up each other (and occasionally, when she puts in the effort, both get showed up by Miranda) but then you wonder what is it all for?

I’m materialistic, which is maybe why people clutching their household objects drew me so magnetically. The images came to me, unbidden, in my mind’s eye. My material world floated around me in what the Germans call kopfkino, or inner cinema: I saw people clutching food and animals and objects, all of them holding on tight. A bold and refreshingly zany novel of gay millennial life in New York, Dykette is sharp and unsparing as a play piercing needle. Bound to set countless group chats afire, this book signals Jenny Fran Davis as a writer to watch.” Sasha is, if you've read the author's prior work, pretty obviously a self-insert. Same dog, same opinions, same behavior by her own admission. There are other characters who are also avatars. Sasha's primary rival, Darcy, is unmistakably a spin on a certain Brooklyn it-girl. Jules is nakedly Rachel Maddow. I think I felt a lot of anxiety about representing a community, slash my community, of lesbian, queer, Brooklyn, my age group — I felt hesitant and anxious to even attempt representation in full. It felt impossible, and it also didn't quite feel like a useful goal. I have found that in a lot of coverage of novels and memoirs that are not mainstream in whatever way, there's a lot of talk about seeing yourself if you're a member of the community, and the importance of representing X community in X way. I think I really leaned into hyper-specificity as a way to resist the pressure or the expectation to represent everyone. Instead, I relied on my skills that I've always had, observing really closely, and then faithfully documenting what I saw, not in the great wide world, but in a group of friends. That was something that I made peace with really early on — this isn't a wide swath representation of anything or anyone's community.

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in a nutshell, the focus of this book is on creating Dykette as a category— a sort of new high femme // femme-in-relation-to-butch // femme-as-seen-by-butch. Dykettes, judging from this book, are performative, over the top, insecure, protective, coquettish, concerned with beauty & aesthetics. they see other femmes as competition and butches as potential sexual / romantic partnership. butches are there to provide horniness / sexual interest, while the femmes receive. the sex scenes representing this idea were hot. I also didn’t mind the referencing of external texts in true Iowa MFA form—if you liked this aspect of In the Dream House or Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, this might interest you. There’s something really interesting with this book with the creation of self against media or other people. It’s a mechanism for the self to coalesce.