canberra news: Review: How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ ? Amy Reads

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Review: How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ ? Amy Reads

Title: How to Suppress Women?s Writing
Author:?Russ, Joanna
Length:?159 pages
Genre: Non-Fiction, Women, Writing
Publisher / Year: University of Texas Press / 1983
Source: BookDepository.com
Rating: 5/5
Why I Read It: Ana tumblr-ed it. She is dangerous to my tbr!
Date Read: 21/05/11

In case you can?t read the cover, it says:

She?didn?t?write?it. (But?if?it?s?clear?she?did?the deed?.)?She?wrote?it,?but?she?shouldn?t?have. (It?s political, sexual, masculine, feminist)?She?wrote?it,?but?look what?she?wrote about. (The bedroom, the kitchen, her family. Other women.) She?wrote?it,?but?she?wrote only one of?it. (?Jane Eyre. Poor dear,?that?s all?she?ever??)?She?wrote?it,?but?she?isn?t?really an artist and?it?isn?t?really art. (It?s thriller, a romance, a children?s book.?It?s sci fi.)?She?wrote?it,?but?she?had help. (Robert Browning, Branwell Bronte. Her own ?masculine? side.)?She?wrote?it,?but?she?s an anomaly. (Woolf. With Leaonard?s help.)?She?wrote?it?BUT?

Yes, this book is as completely fantastic as it sounds. Completely tongue in cheek and in-depth view of the criticisms of the writing of women, as well as of the working class and writers of color. I am seriously in awe of this book and of Joanna Russ and want. more. now. I know that I will have to re-read this book a few times to really get all of it as it is just packed full of interesting ideas and insight. I also (I who have always been bored by the classics) want to now read all of the women writers mentioned in this book. THAT is how fantastic this book is.

I had perfect timing for my read of this book. Although I must admit that it did make it hard to objectively review Woolf?s A Room of One?s Own for yesterday. My review was definitely colored by things that I noticed / learned in this book and that made me sound smarter. I like sounding smarter though so it all worked out. I cannot recommend this book enough to everyone, but especially to all participants of the Year of Feminist Classics project. And to all reviewers. Seriously. This book really opened my eyes to the ways in which we talk about women writers and their writing and how we often talk it down without even consciously thinking about it.

The list of topics which Russ discusses in terms of women?s writing and the way it is discussed includes: prohibition, bad faith, denial of agency, pollution of agency, the double standard of content, false categorization, isolation, anomalousness, lack of models, responses, and?aesthetics. Each of these is discussed in-depth in a very sarcastic manner that had me both laughing and horrified all at once. The book is also peppered with fantastic quotes that I would love to share with you. In the end I can?t though because what I want to do is share the whole book. JUST GO READ IT ALREADY! K thanks,

I loved how she kept pointing out so many great things that we know, and yet are so hard to articulate. The bad faith that comes even from the socially institutionalized racism and sexism that we follow along with because we accept so much of our culture ready packaged from others. The ways in which denying the legacy of earlier women writers makes the works that we do read seem anomalies and how breaking the chain or tradition loses so much of the messages. And so on.

Russ also talks about how by keeping only one piece or a few select pieces of the works of past women writers they have been distorted to be only one thing. A lover, a wife, a mother, a whore, etc rather than true multi-faceted individuals. And the only part that we have to remember is the part that was most palatable to those maintaining the histories / compiling the anthologies / etc (i.e. males). Another point Russ argues strongly on is the ways in which the values of women and women?s experiences are discounted as not important by men.

A favorite quote on page 48 reads:

The social invisibility of women?s experience is not ?a failure of human communication.? It is a socially arranged bias persisted in long after the information about women?s experience is available (sometimes even publicly insisted upon.)

And on page 111:

A mode of understanding life which willfully ignores so much can do so only at the peril of thoroughly distorting the rest. A mode of understanding literature which can ignore the private lives of half the human race is not ?incomplete?; it is distorted through and through.

And on page 118:

What is frightening about black art or women?s art of Chicano art ? and so on ? is that it calls into question the very idea of objectivity and absolute standards.
This is a good novel.
Good for what?
Good for whom?

Fascinating right? I will stop now or else this post will never end.

No one is safe in this book. Russ takes the critiques of many (including women themselves) and shows where they went wrong. Woolf of course isn?t overlooked and the author talks a lot about her essay A Room of One?s Own and the ways in which she dismissed so much of the early writings by women. In fact, the author doesn?t even spare herself in this work. She talks about how she herself originally had discounted so many works by authors of color and remarks of her revelation?that perhaps centrality is a relative matter and that it takes work to recognize the contributions of others and to fully immerse yourself in it and appreciate it as it ought to be appreciated.

I?m telling you. Fan-freaking-tastic book. I realize that I am gushing but I don?t think I could be any more coherent if I tried. I will re-read it, and I may talk about it again at that point, for now I will just say please read it