Joanna Russ (born February 22, 1937, New York City[1]), is an American writer and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism and is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire. It used the device of parallel worlds as a form of a mediation of the ways that different societies might produce very different versions of the same person, and how all might interact and respond to 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.[2] Much of her earliest published work was short horror fiction. It has been said that SF was a field dominated by male authors, often thought to be writing for a predominantly male audience.[2] Russ, who is openlylesbian,[3] 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.[2] A notable example is her novel, We Who Are About To, a variation on an established science fiction literary trope: a group of space travelers marooned on an uninhabited planet decide that they must form a colony and "propagate the species". One of the castaway, however, 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 against them. Along with her work as a writer of prose fiction, Russ has also been a playwright and essayist. She has also written 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? Russ won a 1972 Nebula Award for her short story "When It Changed" and a 1983 Hugo Award for her novella "Souls." In recent years she has published little, largely due to chronicback pain and chronic fatigue syndrome.[4]
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 (forthcoming, 2007)
References
^Russ, Joanna (1989), "The Dirty Little Girl", in Salmonson, Jessica Amanda, What Did Miss Darrington See?: An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction, Feminist Press, p. 236, ISBN 1558610065
^ abcBacon-Smith, Camille (2000), Science Fiction Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 95, ISBN 0812215303
^Griffin, Gabriele (2002), Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay Writing, Routledge, p. 172, ISBN 0415159849
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.
Joanna Russ Joanna Russ stands out even among the New Wave as a writer of considerable technical sophistication. Although the contemporary reception of her works is occasionally marred by reviews of critics who may be unduly influenced by her feminist subject matter... more
Critical Essay by Marge Piercy One advantage of working in a genre is that things have to happen, you must create a moving plot, and that discipline keeps Russ' springy intelligence at least somewhat anchored. If she is like any other writer, she makes me think sometimes of Swift. She... more
