How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ

#40days40books entry 29

Another book from 1983. How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ is a scathing tutorial in systemic sexism. The book is broken up into chapters that address many of the statements seen on the cover and their overall power to erase women from the narratives of publication and existence.

The writing is clear and undecorated, and the citations are rich and varied. The last chapter, particularly, is filled with projects and writers working to bring the work of women of color back into focus. The sting of satire here is pretty strong.

This book was recommended to me by a fellow bookseller who'd read it when it was originally published and was thrilled to see it on our shelves. It is a difficult difficult read. The thing is that it is also really funny and, like Angela Davis's book, grounded in a body of research that is made available to interested readers. Thank heavens for citations and bibliographies.

Probably this had a more profound effect on me because I am a writer, and so closely identify with the work that is here discussed. Representation matters. Sadly, every profession in which women have participated has a story that is similar, and everything that is listed in this book is that much more pronounced when the women writing are in any way marginalized.

Have you ever noticed that as soon as someone finds out that one woman was involved in a project whose public face was all men, there are suddenly two or three or twenty more? This book challenges me to look harder at who was writing when, and also I maybe decided to not read men during 2016 (except for reading groups, because duh) and that may have been one of the best reading decisions I made since I rediscovered children's picture books.

#40days40books list