I made a post a while ago from an ask, requesting essays about butch and femme, the femme part was a reblog, I think it deserves its own post on Femme Appreciation Day!
So, a lot of books I enjoy are collections of essays, therefore, here are some recommendations for books, and some of my favourite (femme) essays from them, that you can read and they might help you understand femme better.
from the books I recommend probably the most:
The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader - edited by Joan Nestle:
Flamboyance and fortitude: An introduction - pages 13-20
Of Althea and Flaxie - pages 54-55
Letter to a fifties femme
from a stone butch - pages 102-108 (trigger warning for S.A., police brutality, general violence and suicide mention)
The Femme Question - pages 138 - 146
The Butch-femme
Question - pages 208-219
What we're rollin'
around in bed with:
Sexual silences in feminism - A conversation toward ending them - pages 243-253
The Femme Tapes - pages 254-267
Roles? I don't know
anyone who's "playing": A letter to my femme sisters - pages 268-269
Femme-inism - posts 362-366
Femme-dyke - pages 378-383
Reclaiming femme...
again - pages 388-389
I Love Butches - pages 420-422
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme - edited by Ivan Coyote and Zena Sharman:
Never Be Hungry Again - pages 53-55
Looking Straight At You - pages 70-75
Between My Fingers - pages 105-106 [femme and disability]
FEMME SHARK MANIFESTO - pages 244-248
*Making intelligible the controversies over
femme identities: A functionalist approach to
conceptualizing the subversive meanings of femme genders - Heidi M. Levitt & Kathleen M. Collins
S/HE - Minnie Bruce Pratt
My Lesbian Husband: Landscapes of a Marriage - Barrie Jean Borich
**I mention these because though they're not explicit "THIS IS WHAT'S FEMME" they're rich in femme representation and femme perspective, so keep that in mind as you read, if you read them.