Joanna Russ

[maevele]

Damn. Artistically I loved her work so fucking much. I'm not going to pretend she didn't, like most feminists of her time have some fucked up trans stuff going on, but she's one of the few second wavers who came around and realized she had been transphobic, so it doesn't take much off the shine of her brilliance for me.
Certain lines, certain images from in her work have stayed vibrant in my head for years now.
"My guts on the floor, beautiful when you are angry" I first read Female Man for a feminist book group at Room, and I was the only one who liked the book, the only one who finished it. The others weren't put off by the politics, but by her style, the shifting of perspectives, and how Violent and Angry it was. The things I loved about it. I still have my copy of it filled with notes and underlines.
Everyone acts as though that was her only significant fiction work just because of how significant it was, but goddamn, some of her other smaller works, We who are about to..., Souls. May not have been as "Politically relevant" but were awesome, mind shaking literature.

And then there's How To Suppress Women's Writing. If that were all she had written, she would still deserve great tribute.

A really great mind has died. I may have to skip reading fanfic for a few days and re-read her stuff.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Indeed. What are we fighting for, from 1988, does a good job of acknowledging the ignorance of 2nd wavers, and point us to great reading in race, class, trans issues.

One of the ways she made me breathe right connected with disability. I can't point to particular sentences, but all her work was (not surprisingly) infused with the experience of living with pain and moving forward.

[maevele]

HOW HAVE I NOT READ THAT ONE? What the hell? wow. I'm having emo reactions to finding there's something of hers that's new to me right when we've lost her.

[jesse_the_k]

Probably because it was published by St Martins in 1998, hardback only. And I have a copy! I'll lend it to you after WisCon, ok?

[ide_cyan]

From 1998, though she started it in the 80s. I frelling love that book. It led me to Christine Delphy's work, among others.

[ithiliana]

Seconding the rec for What are we fighting for in which she (and she's about the only feminist of her generation that I know of, would love to hear of others) began to acknowledge and deal with intersectionality and the racism and transphobia of the 1970s white feminist movement.

I'm planning to start re-reading and posting about her work. IN fact, damnit, I'm thinking of a community....*goes to see what's out there*

[hypatia]

I would join such a community!

[rhivolution]

Indeed, indeed. [sighs] I wish I owned some of her work.