Joanna Russ Issue of the CSZ

I'm pleased to announce that the Cascadia Subduction Zone has just published a special issue on Joanna Russ. "This issue of The Cascadia Subduction Zone is supplemental, published without regard for our usual schedule and distributed free of charge to subscribers. For the editors, it’s an exceptionally special issue we began planning shortly after Joanna Russ’s death last year. When I think about Joanna Russ’s relationship to feminism and feminist science fiction in general and to the work the CSZ aims to nurture and provoke in particular, Christine de Pizan’s brilliant conceit of the City of Ladies comes to my mind. The medieval thinker constructed her “City” of every powerful, accomplished woman she knew of. Russ’s work, always powerful and challenging, is more than a brick in the wall of our city, though; it is a substantial element of its foundation. Foundations are tricky things, especially in the seismic times in which we live. They are invisible to those paying only casual attention to the buildings they support.
But for the inhabitants of any building, the foundation matters tremendously." (Quotation from my introductory essay)
 
Non-subscribers can purchase an electronic version for $4 or both the print & electronic version for $5 here. 

Current Issue
Vol. 2 Supplement
August 2012 

Essays

Outsider, Creative Contrarian,
Lesbian and Feminist Theorist
    by L. Timmel Duchamp

Antagonisms
   by Farah Mendlesohn

Feminist Futures Out of Time: Reading Joanna Russ’s
What Are We Fighting For?
    by Alexis Lothian

Alienation and “the Other”
in the Short Fiction of Joanna Russ
    by Brit Mandelo

Reviews

On Joanna Russ
    edited by Farah Mendlesohn
    reviewed by Candra K. Gill

Heiresses of Russ 2011:
The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction
    edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Steve Berman
    reviewed by Cynthia Ward

Featured Artist

Monte Rogers

Brit Mandelo's We Wuz Pushed: Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-Telling

It's my pleasure to announce that Aqueduct Press has just released a new volume in the Conversation Pieces Series, We Wuz Pushed: Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-Telling, by Brit Mandelo. "To speak radical truths—unapologetically, ferociously, rudely when necessary—is the central purpose of Joanna Russ's influential body of work," declares Mandelo in her essay on Russ's radical, groundbreaking literary and critical work. Mandelo’s essay traces Russ's evolving efforts to speak truth throughout her literary career—examining both Russ's successes and failures in doing so. She insists that Russ problematized and individualized her ultimate understanding of truth without rejecting its possibility. Rather, Mandelo argues, the trajectory of change in Russ's work and her revision of prior truths itself constitutes a valuable part of the truth-telling project. Russ emerges in Mandelo's essay as a heroic though all-too-human intellectual and artist, one whose angry, brilliant work we cannot afford to ignore or forget.

To tell you the truth, when this arrived in Aqueduct's mail, I snatched it from the pile to read first, rather than let it go to Kath, as mss sent to us usually do--and I devoured it one sitting. I suspect that a lot of Aqueduct readers will be as riveted as I by this essay.

You can buy the volume here for $9, or the e-book for $5.95. I'll be interested to hear what its readers might have to say about it. 

Quote of the day

All oppressed people must be controlled. Since open force and economic coercion are practical only part of the time, ideology-- that is, internalized oppression, the voice in the head-- is brought in to fill the gap. When people discover their own power, governments tremble.--- Joanna Russ, ""Power and Helplessness in the Women's Movement"