Skip to content

Joanna Russ Study (University of Illinois Press)

"Joanna Russ" a Study for University of Illinois Press's "Masters Of Science Fiction" list, has been in the making for three or four years (wow . . .) & now it is done. It's been a long trail, an absorbing story with endless diversions, many twisty passages, much intriguing stuff that I never knew before, even intriguing stuff that (with an effort) I decided not to pursue, and much that I remembered, much that I had learned, in the eighties, nineties, about SF's Seventies Feminism/Feminist Seventies.

I wasn't there for the seventies as such. My contribution to Joanna Russ studies in the seventies consisted of walking past the cover of the Star edition of The Female Man in the Straits Times, Singapore's biggest book store, time and again, and thinking . . . a) is that lady on the cover a feminist? Really? ... If you know the edition you won't be surprised at my uncertainty, and b) Nope. I am not a man. I'll be a female human being, if you like . . . But really I'm absolutely convinced I'm a Gwyneth.
Before I bought it.

Anyway, here's my study, out now. Read her books. Read her essays, read her stories. I promise you (safe bet, if you are reading this!) that whatever your preference as to gender identity, you'll have the time of your life. And like me you will learn stuff, lots of mind-expanding, daunting, hard-to-take, thrilling, tragic, funny and clever stuff, that you did not know before.

Here's the announcement: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/74rgb7hm9780252042638.html

Here's another page where you can buy, with couple of early reader-reviews:

https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/165639


Can't leave without saying I love the cover they gave me (thank you so much, Tamara Shidlauski!), and many thanks to all the many people who helped me on the way.