To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science FictionMy rating: 5 of 5 stars

Russ’s collection of essays is a wonderful read, and still strongly resonates today. I wish I had this in the 1970s and 80s when I was growing up and an avid consumer of scifi, but then again, maybe I wouldn’t have been ready yet to hear some of the truths she was speaking about sexism and racism.

I enjoyed her harsh, yet honest, take down of Star Wars in her “SF and Technology as Mystification” essay (1978, pp. 26-40). This essay is followed in the collection by another one that is great but also so sad: “Amor Vincit Foeminam: The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction” (1980). Russ just kept getting more incisive, skewering sexism in film with her essay “A Boy and His Dog: The Final Solution” (1975, pp. 65-76). I wanted to quote from this essay but I realized I highlighted almost the entire thing. Find it, read it, learn it.

This is followed by another essay that was written in 1971, published in ‘72 and certainly relevant in 2020, especially with the Black Lives Matter, MeToo, and other movements. Russ’s essay, “What Can a Heroine Do? or Why Women Can’t Write” is so powerful. She looks at what are women and people of color “allowed” to write in a white male-dominated and white male-centered world.

I originally found this collection of essays due to her piece on the modern gothic romance. In an essay titled “Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me and I Think It’s My Husband: The Modern Gothic”, Russ delves into the world imagined by these types of novels. Instead of empowering readers, mostly women, it seeks to subvert them and keep them in a idealized (by white males) world where they happily embrace their otherness and second-class status.

I really enjoyed this collection and am pleased that it is still relevant and still available. The battles are fought, some are lost, some are won, but the “war” is still not settled.