On strike against God

This insightful critical edition of the 1980 novella from Russ (1937--2011) highlights the enduring vitality of its story about an English professor's lesbian awakening. Esther, 38, lives in a small college town, having divorced the man she loved but could never have satisfying sex with. During the summer break, she chats with her friend Jean--a graduate student in classics whom Esther nicknames "the Twenty-Six-Year-Old Wonder"--about their frustrations over the patriarchal status quo and the careers of women writers. Eventually, their mutual attraction forces them to reevaluate their identities. Russ's prose glints with wit and sublimated rage, especially when exploring lesbian alienation from mainstream notions of womanhood and describing Esther's encounters with casually misogynistic men ("You're strange creatures, you women intellectuals. Tell me: what's it like to be a woman?" a colleague says to her, prompting her to imagine shooting him and saying, "It's like that"). Pollak and contributor Jeanne Thornton skillfully contextualize the novel in the women's liberation movement and Russ's wider bibliography, and note her impact on contemporary writers. It's a fantastic introduction for those unfamiliar with the author, and a valuable addition to the collection of any Russ devotee. (July)

Completed in 1973 and first published in 1980, Russ's brilliant autobiographical novella stands apart from and has been largely overshadowed by her influential science fiction. The Feminist Press restores this audacious, incendiary text in an impressively curated critical edition featuring complementary essays and alternate endings by Russ, supporting material from editor Alec Pollak and writers Jeanne Thornton and Mary Anne Mohanraj, an interview with author and critic Samuel R. Delany, and Russ's correspondence with poet Marilyn Hacker. The rare woman English professor at a small college town in upstate New York, Esther is utterly disenchanted with an infantilizing patriarchy and its pretentious paragons in academia. Fired by her uneasy dawning affection for statuesque graduate student Jean, she comes into her own as "a something else," rejecting the arbitrary confines of gender and the pathologization of lesbianism. Joy vies with sorrow, and mordant wit with moving candor, as she lets her guard down to discover that "there's nothing so awful as being (coming) alive." VERDICT Vitriolic, vulnerable, polemical and devastatingly funny, Russ's uncompromising tour de force bristles with trenchant truth-telling that will make it a life-changing encounter for many readers. Essential.