Missed Her is Ivan E. Coyote’s sixth solo book, a powerful collection demonstrating Coyote’s first-rate story-telling skills and ability to gently weave together topics, including the complexities of family, gender and sexuality, age, community (geographical, queer, and otherwise), and myriad other issues that all seem to point to the larger idea of finding one’s “home” in a complicated world.
These thirty short essays will leave readers wanting more, but with an awareness that they are written with the restraint and intention of an experienced writer and speaker. Coyote’s humor and uncanny sense of timing shine through the many serious themes of this book, giving them a lightness that makes for a fun, while emotionally stirring, read. In “Straighten Up,” Coyote reflects on her heightened awareness with her appearance and behavior in relation to other people’s perceptions of her, and the dangers that can result from her ambiguity. At a pit-stop in rural Northern Ontario, Coyote passes by three men outside, who “stop in mid-sentence to check me out when I walk by. I nod politely, just enough eye contact to not seem suspicious, but not enough that I am looking for a fight. . . . Maybe they saw a dyke; maybe they think I’m a gay man. There was definitely something about me. Goddamn Fleuvog boots” (47). Later, at another pit-stop outside of Alberta, Coyote gets propositioned by a man, who opens by commenting on her dog, and Coyote wonders, “It could have been the little fluffy dog. Maybe that’s what he saw. Or the boots. Goddamn Fleuvogs, get me every time” (50).
“All About Herman” highlights Coyote’s inclination to allow her subjects to tell their own stories, in a participant/observer role, as she takes us back and forth from present to past through her attempt to record her ninety-year-old grandmother’s history. “Lately her musings have grown somehow more poignant, more emotional, full of regrets (130). . . . I get the story from her in snapshots, short bursts, late-night kitchen table talk when the lips are loose with the whiskey’ (133). Most of the essay is quoted from her grandmother’s letters and talks, and seems to channel images from her through Coyote to the reader. As her grandmother talks about her first tumultuous love, we can envision, through Coyote’s eyes, “the propane fireplace on in the living room and she is sitting with her legs tucked up beside her on the couch like she does. . . . Newspapers and magazines cover the coffee table, and she has a fresh cup of black tea with cream and sugar in it on the side table, next to a plate empty save for a scattering of toast crumbs” (129).
Perhaps the most enjoyable essays in the book are Coyote’s playful musings on gender identity, sex, and sexuality, as demonstrated in “Hats Off,” “A Butch Roadmap,” “Throwing in the Towel,” and, of course, “Boner Preservation Society.” I don’t want to give it away. You will have to read it.
Recommended for any LGBT collection, in school, public, and academic libraries, from adolescent and up.
Reviewed by, Jesse Nachem
Records Specialist
University of California in Oakland
[…] Missed Her by Ivan Coyote was reviewed at GLBT Reviews. […]