I am not a writer, as such. I am a marker, maybe that is a way to say it. All the signs that emerge on the page (I put them there, they came here through me) (some were already there, in the weave of the paper, no tabula rasa) demand my reading. The responsibility for making words is the responsibility for reading. The practice of writing is already a reading, of the writing already written, of the saturated page, smitten with that already-written, in language. 1

Born on February 22, 1937, in the Bronx, New York, Joanna Russ was always off-script. The daughter of two teachers, Everett and Bertha, Joanna was surrounded by creativity from a young age: her mother, whose family was of Jewish descent (the Zimmers), had a keen eye for artistic expression. Little Joanna seemed to know exactly what she wanted to do with her life: creating stories and writing them down in various forms (stories, poems, comics, and drawings) was a passion that brought her more joy than any other game.

Just as Mary Shelley wrote about herself in the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, young Joanna had a passion for storytelling—a talent which was already recognised during her years at William Howard Taft High School. There, she was included among the top ten students honoured by the Westinghouse Science Talent Search award. As a student at Cornell University during a time of political and cultural upheaval, she mingled with prominent intellectuals of the time and studied alongside Vladimir Nabokov. She later attended the Yale Drama School, graduating in 1960. After a brief and impulsive marriage to Albert Amateau, Russ decided to cultivate her professional life independently, taking sole responsibility for her choices and distancing herself from conventional attachments. As an academic, she gained teaching experience at Cornell University and SUNY Binghamton before joining the University of Washington, where she became a well-known and respected scholar.

Her career as a writer runs parallel to her theoretical research, and the two are never truly separate. Russ was determined to minimize this duality, if not eliminate it entirely.

One of the best things (for me) about science fiction is that – at least theoretically – it is a place where the ancient dualities disappear. Day and night, up and down, “masculine” and ”feminine” are purely specific, limited phenomena which have been mythologised by people. They are man-made (not woman-made). Excepting up and down, night and day (maybe). Out in space there is no up or down, no day or night, and in the point of view space can give us, I think there is no 'opposite' sex – what a word! Opposite what? The Eternal Feminine and the Eternal Masculine become the poetic fancies of a weakly dimorphic species trying to imitate every other species in a vain search for what is 'natural'.2

However, this was all but easy: Russ was writing at a time when science fiction was not considered worthy of academic interest and was largely dominated by male authors and audiences. Despite these obstacles, her stories quickly gained significant recognition (winning the Nebula Award and the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 1982 for When It Changed, the Pilgrim Award for criticism in 1988, and earning multiple Hugo Award nominations between 1970 and 1982). Russ's writing resonated with female readers who appreciated her strong political views and admired her literary talent. From the very beginning, Russ’s unique voice was characterized by her feminist take on utopian fiction, coupled with her radical political activism.

Joanna Russ published her first science fiction story, Nor Custom Stale, in 1959 in the popular Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, while still a student at Yale Drama School. In the 1960s, following the success of Picnic on Paradise (1968), she became a prominent and discussed figure in the American New Wave in science fiction, known for her strong feminist stance. And Chaos Died (1970) was followed by a republication of Picnic on Paradise along with other stories in the collection The Adventures of Alyx (1976). The 1970s were a particularly productive period, with the publication of The Female Man (1975), a landmark work in feminist science fiction, as well as We Who Are About To... (1977), a tale of survival and meditation on social dynamics, solidarity, and death, and The Two of Them (1977), a story of redemption with an entirely feminist perspective. Later works, such as On Strike Against God (1980), The Zanzibar Cat (1983), and Extra(ordinary) People (1985), continued to explore feminist themes and the challenges faced by women. Russ wanted to use feminist critique as a lens through which she could examine political and social life, particularly in Western and American cultures. Central to her work was the idea of being able to choose, both as a woman and a human being, an alternative path to the conventional and comforting options offered by patriarchal societies. This choice represents a significant act of responsibility that defines one’s destiny.

Every choice begets at least two worlds of possibility, that is, one in which you do and one in which you don't: or very likely many more, one in which you do quickly, one in which you do slowly; one in which you don't, but hesitate, one in which you hesitate and frown, one in which you hesitate and sneeze, and so on. To carry this line of argument further, there must be an infinite number of possible universes (such is the fecundity of God) for there is no reason to imagine Nature as prejudiced in favor of human action. Every displacement of every molecule, every change in orbit of every electron, every quantum of light that strikes here and not there – each of these must somewhere have its alternatives.3

When It Changed, published in Harlan Ellison’s anthology Again, Dangerous Visions in 1972, foreshadowed Russ's most famous work, The Female Man (1975). This novel is a powerful critique of patriarchal oppression, exploring the lives of four women (or rather, four versions of the same female genotype) from vastly different historical and cultural contexts. Jeannine, living in a world unaware of any major catastrophe, and Joanna, navigating a world similar to 1969 America, both grapple with patriarchal norms in recognizable ways, either embracing or rejecting them. Jael, a warrior in a world divided between men (Manland) and women (Womanland), enacts a non-stop war on males. Finally, Janet represents a liberated woman in a peaceful and self-sufficient all-female society. Through captivating storytelling and bold stylistic choices, the novel functions as a manifesto in which, using the device of parallel universes, Russ reflects on how phallocratic authority, supported by a culturally and economically capitalistic system, set up a bureaucratic hierarchy that reduces women to tools, accessories, or objects for male use. In contrast, the utopian vision of an all-female society offers women newfound agency and autonomy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, in the polarized, conflict-ridden world of Jael, survival demands that women adapt by building stronger bodies to be able to kill. Russ employs a postmodern interplay of voices, weaving together multiple protagonists and narrators. She embeds herself within the text through the words of her characters: Jael’s bitter rage, Jeannine’s historical naivety, Joanna’s determined wisdom, and Janet’s calm tranquillity. Each represents a part of the author’s nature or, more broadly, the diverse facets of womanhood. Reading The Female Man explores what it means to live the life of a woman. In doing so, Russ creates a captivating precursor to the concept of "kinship," later explored by Donna Haraway (who addressed this through the idea of the cyborg [Haraway 2016a] but eventually moved beyond it [Haraway 2016b]).

The Female Man can be considered a text that lies somewhere between essay and fiction. It showcases Russ's distinctive, ironic, and clear voice, which is also evident in her non-fiction work. She doesn’t hesitate to take a stand, even against other female authors of her time whom she believes are not sufficiently radical. Her initial criticisms of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness led to a tense relationship between the two authors. However, over time, they managed to turn this tension into a productive dialogue and collaboration, also due to Le Guin’s growing radicalization, as she became less willing to accept the rules of patriarchal society.

Russ had a fruitful and continuous exchange of letters with James Tiptree Jr. The correspondence started in 1972 with a letter from "Tip", who wrote as an enthusiastic fan. Their friendship deepened over the years and the two authors started discussing the challenges of science fiction from a female and feminist perspective.

Russ’s stances, starting in the 1970s (e.g., Speculations on the Subjunctivity of Science Fiction, 1973; Science Fiction and Technology as Mystification, 1978) are crucial to the feminist tradition both inside and outside of the science fiction genre. How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983) represents an important milestone in the discourse on women and writing, while reconnecting with a tradition that sees Woolf as both a key intellectual figure and a precursor. Russ revises and extends the arguments Woolf made in A Room of One's Own (1929), addressing the societal restrictions on women writers, and passes the torch of this struggle to future generations ("You finish it").

After passing the torch, and after advocating for the reclamation of pornography as a feminist theme (Being Against Pornography, 1984) and continuing her feminist fight both inside and outside of science fiction (Amor Vincit Foeminam, 1980), Russ slipped away – as her dear friend, writer Samuel R. Delany, put it – on April 27, 2011, in Tucson, Arizona.


Translated by Viola Motti.
1 The pink guitar, DuPlessis, 1990, 173
2 Smith – Gomol [1993] 2009: 38
3 Russ 2008: 6