Joanna Russ

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Joanna Russ (born February 22, 1937), American writer and feminist, is the author of a number of works of science fiction and feminist literary criticism. Among her most influential novels is The Female Man, an acclaimed SF novel and pioneering meditation on how differing societies might produce very different versions of the same person, and how all might interact, particularly in the face of sexism.

Russ first came to be noticed in the science fiction world in the early 1970s, a time when women were starting to enter the field in larger numbers. It can and has been said that SF was a field dominated by male authors, often thought to be writing for a predominantly male audience. Russ was one of the most outspoken authors to challenge male dominance of the field, and is generally regarded as one of the leading feminist science fiction scholars and writers.

A notable example is her novel, We Who Are About To, a clever variation on an established science fiction theme: a group of space travelers marooned on an uninhabited planet decide that they must form a colony and "propagate the species". One of the castaways is a woman who has no particular desire to be part of such an effort. When the others try to force her to be part of the colony, she rebels.

Along with her work as a science fiction and fantasy writer (much of her earliest published work is short horror fiction), Russ has also been a playwright and essayist. She is much recognized for nonfiction works such as the essay collection Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts and the book-length study of modern feminism, What Are We Fighting For?

In recent years she has published little, largely due to health problems (back pain and chronic fatigue syndrome).[1]

Contents

[edit] Published writings

Novels

Short fiction

Non-fiction

  • How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983)
  • Magic Mammas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays (1985)
  • To Write Like a Woman (1996)
  • What Are We Fighting For?: Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism (1997)
  • The Country You Have Never Seen (2005)
  • "Introduction" to Revolution, She Wrote [1], by Clara Fraser (1998)

See also Feminist science fiction.

[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

  • Cortiel, Jeanne. Demand My Writing: Joanna Russ/Feminism/Science Fiction. Science Fiction Texts and Studies. Liverpool, England: Liverpool UP, 1999. ISBN 0-85323-614-3
  • ---. "Determinate Politics of Indeterminacy: Reading Joanna Russ's Recent Work in Light of Her Early Short Fiction." Future Females, the Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism. Eds. Marleen S. Barr, et al. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 219-36. ISBN 0-8476-9126-8
  • ---. Joanna Russ. Significant Contemporary Feminists: A Biocritical Sourcebook. Ed. Jenifer Scanlon. New York, Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood, 1999.
  • Delany, Samuel R. "Orders of Chaos: The Science Fiction of Joanna Russ." Women Worldwalkers: New Dimensions of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Ed. Jane B. Weedman. Lubbock: Texas Tech P, 1985. 95-123.
  • Delany, Samuel. "Introduction." Joanna Russ. We Who Are About To. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. v-xv. ISBN 0-8195-6759-0
  • Hacker, Marilyn. "Science Fiction and Feminism: The Work of Joanna Russ." Chrysalis 4 (1977): 67-79.
  • Holt, Marilyn J. "Joanna Russ, 1937." Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. Ed. Everett Franklin Bleiler. New York: Scribner's, 1982. 483-90.
  • Law, Richard G. "Joanna Russ and The "Literature of Exhaustion"." Extrapolation 25 (1984): 146-56.
  • Malmgren, Carl. "Meta-Sf: The Examples of Dick, Leguin, and Russ." Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 43.1 (2002): 22.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Feminist SFF & Utopia: Reviews: Joanna Russ. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
Persondata
NAME Russ, Joanna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Feminist science fiction writer and critic.
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH United States
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
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