How to Suppress Women's Writing

How to Suppress Women's Writing  
Author(s) Joanna Russ
Language English
Publication date 1983
Media type Print

How to Suppress Women's Writing is a book by Joanna Russ, published in 1983.[1] Written in the style of an irreverent sarcastic guidebook, it explains how women and minorities are prevented from producing written works.

The methods used that the book outlines are:

  1. Prohibitions
  2. Bad Faith
  3. Denial of Agency (deny that a woman wrote it)
  4. Pollution of Agency (show that their art is immodest, not actually art, or shouldn't have been written about)
  5. The Double Standard of Content (one set of experiences is considered more valuable than another)
  6. False Categorizing (women artists are categorized as the wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, or lovers of male artists)
  7. Isolation (the myth of isolated achievement: only one work, or a short series of poems are considered great)[1][2]
  8. Anomalousness
  9. Lack of Models
  10. Responses
  11. Aesthetics

Reception

Feminist and civil rights scholars generally received the book positively.[3][4] It is highly regarded for its cutting humor and wit, as well as its disarming and novel presentation of the problems of sexism and racism in the arenas of art and writing.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b How to Suppress Women's Writing Russ, Joanna. University of Texas. 1983. ISBN 0292724454
  2. ^ How to Suppress Women's Writing : excerpts from the book
  3. ^ a b From the Editor's Perspective: "The Feminist Critique: Mastering Our Monstrosity" by Shari Benstock Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 137-149
  4. ^ The Imperial Scholar Revisited: How to Marginalize Outsider Writing, Ten Years Later by Richard Delgado University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 140, No. 4 (Apr., 1992), pp. 1349-1372