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| Author | Joanna Russ |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | University of Texas Press |
Publication date | 1983 |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0-292-72445-4 |
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, not given credit when such works are produced, or dismissed or belittled for those contributions they are acknowledged to have made. Although primarily focusing on texts written in English, the author also includes examples from non-English works as well as paintings. Citing authors and critics like Suzy McKee Charnas, Margaret Cavendish, Vonda McIntyre, Russ aims to describe the systematic social forces that fight female authors.
Methods[edit]
The book outlines eleven common methods that are used to ignore, condemn or belittle the work of female authors:
- Prohibitions
- Prevent women from access to the basic tools for writing.
- Bad Faith
- Unconsciously create social systems that ignore or devalue women's writing.
- Denial of Agency
- Deny that a woman wrote it.
- Pollution of Agency
- Show that their art is immodest, not actually art, or shouldn't have been written about.
- The Double Standard of Content
- Claim that one set of experiences is considered more valuable than another.
- False Categorizing
- Incorrectly categorize women artists as the wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, or lovers of male artists.
- Isolation
- Create a myth of isolated achievement that claims that only one work or short series of poems is considered great.
- Anomalousness
- Assert that the woman in question is eccentric or atypical.
- Lack of Models
- Reinforce a male author dominance in literary canons in order to cut off women writers' inspiration and role models.
- Responses
- Force women to deny their female identity in order to be taken seriously.
- Aesthetics
- Popularize aesthetic works that contain demeaning roles and characterizations of women.[1][2]
Background[edit]
Although Russ was an active feminist and one of the most vocal authors of the feminist science fiction scene during the late 1960s and 70s, How to Suppress Women's Writing marked a transition towards her focus on literary criticism.[3] In the same decade, she went on to write an essay entitled "Recent Feminist Utopias," which was later published in 1995 as part of her book, To Write Like a Woman.
Reception[edit]
Feminist and civil rights scholars generally received the book positively.[4][5] 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.[4]
References[edit]
- ^ a b How to Suppress Women's Writing Russ, Joanna. University of Texas. 1983. ISBN 0-292-72445-4
- ^ How to Suppress Women's Writing : excerpts from the book
- ^ "On Joanna Russ" Mendlesohn, Farah. Wesleyan University Press. 2009. ISBN 978-0292724457
- ^ 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 Cite error: The named reference "tulsa" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ 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
Category:1983 books Category:American non-fiction books Category:Feminist books
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