null Skip to main content

On Strike against God

Joanna Russ

$17.95
SKU:
9781558613140
UPC:
9781558613140
Gift wrapping:
Options available
Published by:
The Feminist Press at CUNY
Pub date:
07/23/2024
Binding type:
Paperback
Pages:
208
ISBN:
9781558613140
Adding to cart… The item has been added

A lost feminist masterwork by feminist and speculative fiction icon Joanna Russ about a lesbian's coming-to-consciousness during the social upheaval of the 1970s.


When Esther, an English professor living in 1970s small-town New York, has her first lesbian love affair, the fallout brings her everyday miseries into focus and sends her spiraling. Confronted with the homophobia of straight feminists and the misogyny of gay men, Esther is left to forge a language for her feminism and her burgeoning lesbian desire. A darkly comedic story of feminist love, hope, and reckoning, On Strike Against God's call to readers --"Let's be reasonable. Let's demand the impossible"--rings urgently true today.

Originally published in 1980, On Strike Against God is the only realist novel by feminist science fiction icon Joanna Russ. This new critical edition includes previously unpublished alternate endings to the novel, letters between Joanna Russ and acclaimed poet Marilyn Hacker, and additional essays by Russ. Contemporary authors Jeanne Thornton and Mary Anne Mohanraj discuss Russ's continued impact, and an interview with science fiction luminary Samuel R. Delany reflects on Delany's decades-long friendship with Russ.