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elenajohansen's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
The prologue asks the reader not to view the book as a mirror, but it was impossible for me not to, as a woman, as a writer, and as a student of "literature" both formally (I did take courses on it in college) and informally (how many book reviews am I up to now? Last time I counted it was over 800, so by now I might be close to or even over a thousand...)
I looked into that mirror and saw not only the ways I have personally been suppressed, but the ways I have participated in my own suppression and suppressed others.
I've never wanted to write "literature" or be regarded as a "great" writer; when I was scribbling (to borrow from Alcott) away on notebook paper in high school teachers would joke about The Great American Novel, but chasing that laurel was never my goal. I wrote about what interested me, which has ranged from weird absurdist short stories when I was younger, to fantasy and sci-fi, and finally, what I actually published was romance (though some of it in a post-apocalyptic setting, so that's also blending in some sff/horror elements.) I never felt actively pushed out from the "center," as Russ puts it, of the literary canon; I never wanted to be there.
But that was on a conscious level. Subconsciously, I probably knew I couldn't get there even if I wanted to and tried.
So I'm a genre-fiction author. (I'll still call myself that even if it's been over three years since I published and there's no new book on the horizon--literature authors can take decades-long breaks and still come back with another book and they'll have been an author the whole time, so I'll keep my title and my pride.) I'm quite comfortable and at home in the genre suburbs, away from the bright city lights of the literary canon, but I live there knowing full well that no matter how well genre fiction sells, no matter how romance is the biggest single genre in the industry in terms of both published works and total sale, it will still remain the suburbs. There's no real hope in me that genre fiction will ever get the recognition it deserves from the literary elite--but that's how I'm still participating in the system, because if I didn't still, on some level, think literature was "better" then it wouldn't matter, would it?
I live in the genre suburbs based on what I was reading growing up--my mom was an avid reader and it was almost entirely mystery and science fiction, not just the "classic" science fiction that was largely male in her day (Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, etc.) but also, with the popularity of the "new" Star Trek series in the late 80s when I was a kid, whole shelves full of Star Trek novels, which in her collection seemed to be roughly balanced in terms of male/female authorship. Almost all of the ones I loved best and reread a dozen or more times were written by women. (I love you, Diane Duane, I didn't even know you'd written non-Trek stuff until years later.)
My role models for writing were not entirely female--it's impossible to deny the impact Stephen King in particular has had on my work--but most of what I read in my late teens and early twenties as well was female-written fantasy, romance, and fantasy-romance. (I refuse to call it romantasy. Absolutely refuse.)
So I don't lack a tradition, one of the forms of dismissal Russ points out is used to isolate female writers as anomalies; their works may be exceptional in quality, but they are still exceptions to the "rule" of male dominance.
What I do lack is an awareness of how deeply I've internalized the male-driven standards of "literature" anyway and wield them as a cudgel in my book reviewing. Yes, I often disdain works of literary fiction knowingly for their hollow pretension and constant insistence that only male experience matters, only men deserve to have their stories told, and everything else is lesser than them. But I had not realized how firmly I had recentered what I believe "good" writing is in my own experiences and my own desires and still looked down on marginalized authors that wrote things too different, too experimental, too unfamiliar, and criticized them in much the same way any of the historical critics Russ quotes would be speaking of my work, were they around still to read it.
It was the section on poetry, I think, that really pushed the mirror in my face and made me cringe at my own actions. Once upon a time, a Tumblr poet made it big with her debut, and I read it a few years later, and I gave it a poor review, contending that no matter how heartfelt it was, it wasn't "poetry." I tried to keep the critique of her work about her work, and not about the obviously powerful emotions and pain that spurred it, and I hope I succeeded; but I definitely used the rubric of "poetry" that I had been taught my whole life as the lens to view her pieces, and they all fell short by that standard, no matter how genuine the emotion was.
I did the exact same thing to her that male critics have been doing to female poets the whole time; she wrote it, but it isn't poetry.
I don't think I would have the experience Russ writes of in her afterword, where she realizes she reads Their Eyes Were Watching God, thinks it's bad, but then realizes she's too far away from it (essentially) and does a bunch of educational reading to bring herself closer to it before she rereads, and hey whaddaya know, it's actually really good. If I reread that slim volume of short poems again...I'll be honest, I'm pretty sure I still wouldn't like it. But I would no longer say it's not poetry. "Growth only happens in the margins," as Russ said repeatedly. All of her observations about the way men dismiss women stand equally true (as she herself says) for any other majority/minority dynamic, and it's the marginalized authors who have the freedom to be different, to push the boundaries and experiment with style and form and content, simply because they are so far away from the calcified center mass of "true" literature that, by unspoken definition, can only be produced by older, white, middle-class or higher men.
I looked into that mirror and saw not only the ways I have personally been suppressed, but the ways I have participated in my own suppression and suppressed others.
I've never wanted to write "literature" or be regarded as a "great" writer; when I was scribbling (to borrow from Alcott) away on notebook paper in high school teachers would joke about The Great American Novel, but chasing that laurel was never my goal. I wrote about what interested me, which has ranged from weird absurdist short stories when I was younger, to fantasy and sci-fi, and finally, what I actually published was romance (though some of it in a post-apocalyptic setting, so that's also blending in some sff/horror elements.) I never felt actively pushed out from the "center," as Russ puts it, of the literary canon; I never wanted to be there.
But that was on a conscious level. Subconsciously, I probably knew I couldn't get there even if I wanted to and tried.
So I'm a genre-fiction author. (I'll still call myself that even if it's been over three years since I published and there's no new book on the horizon--literature authors can take decades-long breaks and still come back with another book and they'll have been an author the whole time, so I'll keep my title and my pride.) I'm quite comfortable and at home in the genre suburbs, away from the bright city lights of the literary canon, but I live there knowing full well that no matter how well genre fiction sells, no matter how romance is the biggest single genre in the industry in terms of both published works and total sale, it will still remain the suburbs. There's no real hope in me that genre fiction will ever get the recognition it deserves from the literary elite--but that's how I'm still participating in the system, because if I didn't still, on some level, think literature was "better" then it wouldn't matter, would it?
I live in the genre suburbs based on what I was reading growing up--my mom was an avid reader and it was almost entirely mystery and science fiction, not just the "classic" science fiction that was largely male in her day (Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, etc.) but also, with the popularity of the "new" Star Trek series in the late 80s when I was a kid, whole shelves full of Star Trek novels, which in her collection seemed to be roughly balanced in terms of male/female authorship. Almost all of the ones I loved best and reread a dozen or more times were written by women. (I love you, Diane Duane, I didn't even know you'd written non-Trek stuff until years later.)
My role models for writing were not entirely female--it's impossible to deny the impact Stephen King in particular has had on my work--but most of what I read in my late teens and early twenties as well was female-written fantasy, romance, and fantasy-romance. (I refuse to call it romantasy. Absolutely refuse.)
So I don't lack a tradition, one of the forms of dismissal Russ points out is used to isolate female writers as anomalies; their works may be exceptional in quality, but they are still exceptions to the "rule" of male dominance.
What I do lack is an awareness of how deeply I've internalized the male-driven standards of "literature" anyway and wield them as a cudgel in my book reviewing. Yes, I often disdain works of literary fiction knowingly for their hollow pretension and constant insistence that only male experience matters, only men deserve to have their stories told, and everything else is lesser than them. But I had not realized how firmly I had recentered what I believe "good" writing is in my own experiences and my own desires and still looked down on marginalized authors that wrote things too different, too experimental, too unfamiliar, and criticized them in much the same way any of the historical critics Russ quotes would be speaking of my work, were they around still to read it.
It was the section on poetry, I think, that really pushed the mirror in my face and made me cringe at my own actions. Once upon a time, a Tumblr poet made it big with her debut, and I read it a few years later, and I gave it a poor review, contending that no matter how heartfelt it was, it wasn't "poetry." I tried to keep the critique of her work about her work, and not about the obviously powerful emotions and pain that spurred it, and I hope I succeeded; but I definitely used the rubric of "poetry" that I had been taught my whole life as the lens to view her pieces, and they all fell short by that standard, no matter how genuine the emotion was.
I did the exact same thing to her that male critics have been doing to female poets the whole time; she wrote it, but it isn't poetry.
I don't think I would have the experience Russ writes of in her afterword, where she realizes she reads Their Eyes Were Watching God, thinks it's bad, but then realizes she's too far away from it (essentially) and does a bunch of educational reading to bring herself closer to it before she rereads, and hey whaddaya know, it's actually really good. If I reread that slim volume of short poems again...I'll be honest, I'm pretty sure I still wouldn't like it. But I would no longer say it's not poetry. "Growth only happens in the margins," as Russ said repeatedly. All of her observations about the way men dismiss women stand equally true (as she herself says) for any other majority/minority dynamic, and it's the marginalized authors who have the freedom to be different, to push the boundaries and experiment with style and form and content, simply because they are so far away from the calcified center mass of "true" literature that, by unspoken definition, can only be produced by older, white, middle-class or higher men.
sophs_mind's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
tricapra's review against another edition
5.0
This absolutely knocked my socks off. Russ is concise, clever and most of all, quite frank in her observations. She doesn't let herself off the hook for her role as an academic participating in the very system she criticizes, which she easily could've. This is a book where you'll want to actually read the Foreword and Afterword.
Anyway, ultra depressing that this is just as relevant in 2022 as it was in 1983. Woof.
Anyway, ultra depressing that this is just as relevant in 2022 as it was in 1983. Woof.
premium_huhn's review against another edition
4.0
Ein wirklich interessanter, wenn auch nicht einfach zu lesender Essay, der erschreckend wenig gealtert ist. Das Titelbild dieser Ausgabe fasst die unsichtbaren und sichtbaren, absichtlich und unbewusst angewandten Strategien zusammen, die Russ als jene indentifiziert, die dafür sorgen, dass wir dazu neigen, von Frauen verfasste Literatur unter den Teppich zu kehren.
Mich persönlich ... naja begeistern ist das falsche Wort, denn ich hab mich ja furchtbar aufgeregt ... aber es beschäftigte mich vor allem das Kapitel über Literaturkanons und Leselisten. Was hab ich mich mit meiner Lehrerin gestritten darüber, nach welchen Kriterien solche Leselisten für den Deutschunterricht erstellt werden und ob sie wirklich sinnvoll sind. Joanna Russ liefert anhand ihrer Analysen, wie Autorinnen systematisch aus solchen Listen rausgehalten werden, einen der Gründe, warum Literaturkanons nie repräsentativ sein können (bestenfalls repräsentativ dafür, was eine bestimmte Gruppe an Leuten meint für lesenswert zu halten), ihre eigenen Inhalte selbst fortführen und aus mehr oder weniger wahllosen Gründen nicht enthaltene Texte in die Bedeutunglosigkeit drängen, die sie ihnen erst zugeschrieben haben.
Besonders lesenswert ist das neue Vorwort einer anderen Autorin im Buch, das dazu auffordert, den Text nicht nur aus Opfer-, sondern bewusst auch aus Täter:innenperspektive zu lesen. Denn was hier in Bezug auf Frauen beschrieben wird, trifft auch auf so ziemlich jede andere marginalisierte Gruppe zu. Was wir nicht lesen wollen, gibt es entweder schlicht nicht oder ist nicht wert, gelesen zu werden. Durch diese Scheuklappenmentalität berauben wir uns selbst jeder Menge guter Geschichten oder neuer Sichtweisen - es lohnt sich also nicht nur aus gesellschaftlicher, sondern auch aus ganz persönlicher Sicht, bewusst über den eigenen Tellerrand zu schauen.
Nicht alles an diesem Essay mochte ich. Das Kapitel über Ästhetik ist aus heutiger Sicht völlig veraltet. Ästhetiken, "Lautstärke", "Brutalität" als typisch männlich oder typisch weiblich zu klassifizieren ... naja. Und ihre pauschale Ablehnung von bestimmten, von ihr als "Lärm" befundenen Musikrichtungen teile ich, als "Lärmfan" auch nicht, zumal mir hier auch nicht mehr ganz klar war, was ihre persönliche Meinung nun mit dem Thema des Textes zu tun haben soll.
Dass die Beispiele im Text nur aus englischsprachigen Autorinnen der weißen Mittelschicht bestehen, ist der Autorin selbst auch schon aufgefallen, sie sah sich allerdings außerstande, daran etwas zu ändern, was ich schade finde. Zumal der Text dadurch, dass sie das Wissen über die meisten dieser Autorinnen voraussetzt, für Leserinnen wie mich, die nicht durch das englische Bildungssystem gegangen sind, auch unnötig erschwert ist.
Mich persönlich ... naja begeistern ist das falsche Wort, denn ich hab mich ja furchtbar aufgeregt ... aber es beschäftigte mich vor allem das Kapitel über Literaturkanons und Leselisten. Was hab ich mich mit meiner Lehrerin gestritten darüber, nach welchen Kriterien solche Leselisten für den Deutschunterricht erstellt werden und ob sie wirklich sinnvoll sind. Joanna Russ liefert anhand ihrer Analysen, wie Autorinnen systematisch aus solchen Listen rausgehalten werden, einen der Gründe, warum Literaturkanons nie repräsentativ sein können (bestenfalls repräsentativ dafür, was eine bestimmte Gruppe an Leuten meint für lesenswert zu halten), ihre eigenen Inhalte selbst fortführen und aus mehr oder weniger wahllosen Gründen nicht enthaltene Texte in die Bedeutunglosigkeit drängen, die sie ihnen erst zugeschrieben haben.
Besonders lesenswert ist das neue Vorwort einer anderen Autorin im Buch, das dazu auffordert, den Text nicht nur aus Opfer-, sondern bewusst auch aus Täter:innenperspektive zu lesen. Denn was hier in Bezug auf Frauen beschrieben wird, trifft auch auf so ziemlich jede andere marginalisierte Gruppe zu. Was wir nicht lesen wollen, gibt es entweder schlicht nicht oder ist nicht wert, gelesen zu werden. Durch diese Scheuklappenmentalität berauben wir uns selbst jeder Menge guter Geschichten oder neuer Sichtweisen - es lohnt sich also nicht nur aus gesellschaftlicher, sondern auch aus ganz persönlicher Sicht, bewusst über den eigenen Tellerrand zu schauen.
Nicht alles an diesem Essay mochte ich. Das Kapitel über Ästhetik ist aus heutiger Sicht völlig veraltet. Ästhetiken, "Lautstärke", "Brutalität" als typisch männlich oder typisch weiblich zu klassifizieren ... naja. Und ihre pauschale Ablehnung von bestimmten, von ihr als "Lärm" befundenen Musikrichtungen teile ich, als "Lärmfan" auch nicht, zumal mir hier auch nicht mehr ganz klar war, was ihre persönliche Meinung nun mit dem Thema des Textes zu tun haben soll.
Dass die Beispiele im Text nur aus englischsprachigen Autorinnen der weißen Mittelschicht bestehen, ist der Autorin selbst auch schon aufgefallen, sie sah sich allerdings außerstande, daran etwas zu ändern, was ich schade finde. Zumal der Text dadurch, dass sie das Wissen über die meisten dieser Autorinnen voraussetzt, für Leserinnen wie mich, die nicht durch das englische Bildungssystem gegangen sind, auch unnötig erschwert ist.
darkor_lf's review against another edition
4.0
La conclusión que saco de este libro, es que para una mujer, cualquier forma de creación es un acto subversivo.
Eso sí, a veces Russ me resulta muy farragosa de leer.
Eso sí, a veces Russ me resulta muy farragosa de leer.