How to Suppress Women's Writing

eBook, 220 pages

English language

Published Dec. 6, 2018 by University of Texas Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-4773-1629-0

(1 review)

This landmark feminist critique presents a “brilliant and scathing” survey of the forces that work against women who dare to write (Nicole Rudick, New York Review of Books).

Are women able to achieve anything they set their minds to? In How to Suppress Women’s Writing, award-winning novelist and scholar Joanna Russ lays bare the subtle—and not so subtle—strategies that society uses to ignore, condemn, or belittle women who produce literature. As relevant today as when it was first published in 1983, this book has motivated generations of readers with its powerful feminist critique. “What is it going to take to break apart these rigidities? Russ’s book is a formidable attempt. It is angry without being self-righteous, it is thorough without being exhausting, and it is serious without being devoid of a sense of humor. But it was published over thirty years ago, in 1983, and there’s not an enormous difference …

This landmark feminist critique presents a “brilliant and scathing” survey of the forces that work against women who dare to write (Nicole Rudick, New York Review of Books).

Are women able to achieve anything they set their minds to? In How to Suppress Women’s Writing, award-winning novelist and scholar Joanna Russ lays bare the subtle—and not so subtle—strategies that society uses to ignore, condemn, or belittle women who produce literature. As relevant today as when it was first published in 1983, this book has motivated generations of readers with its powerful feminist critique. “What is it going to take to break apart these rigidities? Russ’s book is a formidable attempt. It is angry without being self-righteous, it is thorough without being exhausting, and it is serious without being devoid of a sense of humor. But it was published over thirty years ago, in 1983, and there’s not an enormous difference between the world she describes and the world we inhabit” (Jessa Crispin, from the foreword).

“A book of the most profound and original clarity.” —Marge Piercy“Joanna Russ is a brilliant writer, a writer of real moral passion and high wit.” —Adrienne Rich

5 editions

Dysmorphia reviewed How to suppress women's writing by Joanna Russ

Review of "How to suppress women's writing" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

If you have ever wondered as a woman writer what your place in the tradition is, or wondered how to ask the perennial chauvinist questions "well why aren't there more women writers?" this book will help resolve the questions in your own mind and arm you in arguments. The first 100 or so pages of this book are the strongest as far as rhetoric goes. The latter half is more along the lines of literary criticism. While Russ acknowledges the limits of her research and her argument (including an afterword of quotes by women of color), the book does focus on white women writing in English.

The hidden value of the book is the list of female writers who've been neglected in the canon and of suppressed works of writers who are praised for something else.

I recommend it to women writers, women creators, women, feminists, students of literature, fans …

If you have ever wondered as a woman writer what your place in the tradition is, or wondered how to ask the perennial chauvinist questions "well why aren't there more women writers?" this book will help resolve the questions in your own mind and arm you in arguments. The first 100 or so pages of this book are the strongest as far as rhetoric goes. The latter half is more along the lines of literary criticism. While Russ acknowledges the limits of her research and her argument (including an afterword of quotes by women of color), the book does focus on white women writing in English.

The hidden value of the book is the list of female writers who've been neglected in the canon and of suppressed works of writers who are praised for something else.

I recommend it to women writers, women creators, women, feminists, students of literature, fans of the gothic novel, and anyone who seriously wants to know the answer to "why aren't there more women writers?"