How to Suppress Women's Writing

This book was a real eye-opener, when I was younger and I would write stories, any males I would show my writing to, would doubt it. I thought that was because where I grew up and women were not supposed to be writers or anything without their husbands or fathers say so. Also, I thought it was only me as a woman writer of that feeling of needing to write, of the pain of having it inside of me and causing me both mental and physical pain if I could not get it out, but now I see that is what drove women writers to kill themselves. Very good book!

Having read the book (and the online reviews) I must comment that Russ's book is not a personal response to her own situation. Yes SF was male dominated (James Tiptree Jr. was a psuedonym used by a woman in the 50's and '60's so she could get published) but Russ is talking about womens' reception in the literary world in GENERAL. I find it interesting that the two negative reviews are not from people brave enough to sign in - they are also worded in a suspiciously similar fashion. It seems even books about feminist issues will be attacked by men who cannot understand the difference between general, historical issues and personal vendettas. Oye.

Had to read this for a master's class and was blown away by how good it was. If you like to challenge your patterns of thought, this is the book for you. Feminist masterpiece.

This book about women and art is a very accurate commentary, peppered with plenty of humour. All of what Joanna Russ writes about rings true with me, and at the same time I wished it wasn't so. I've always known what she says to be as it is, but I just accepted it, and didn't really give it much thought. All narrow-minded literary scholars (and I've met plenty...so many college profs. are) should read this book, and hopefully it will open their mind.

Despite Russ' bitingly funny commentary and withering asides, in reading this book I found articulated so many things that I had always known and understood as givens. Women's writings have been systematically devalued, and so have women's contributions to academia. And, barring radical change, these trends will continue. (If nothing else, it explained the [outmoded and loathsome] world view of the English Department at my university.)An important and eye opening work that should be read by all students and teachers of the Fine and Liberal Arts, but won't be, because, well, a woman wrote it. She wrote it, but...

This book should be handed out to all women who are interested in writing or reading - and to all open-minded men as well, for that matter. An indispensible intellectual tool-kit for tackling the many ways in which prejudice and illogic can cloud supposedly "objective" literary criticism, it's also clear, concise (rare qualities in literary criticism), and very, very, very funny.