The Evanston Public Library Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Group will meet online, via Zoom, to discuss The Female Man, by Joanna Russ.
Join us for a virtual book group meeting! To participate, create a free account at https://zoom.us.
You will also need to click on the REGISTER button on this (EPL) page, and include your email address. Once you have registered here, you will be sent the meeting ID and password, along with some tips for using Zoom. You do not have to appear via video if you don't want to - you can join using audio and chat only, if that is your preference. At the scheduled meeting time, click on the link you have been sent to join.
This month, the group will be discussing The Female Man, by Joanna Russ. You can read a free copy of this book online via Hoopla. (You will need your Evanston Public Library card to sign up for Hoopla, if you have not done so already. If EPL is not your home library, check with the library that originally issued your card to see if they offer Hoopla as well.)
About the book:
Widely acknowledged as Joanna Russ's masterpiece, The Female Man is the suspenseful, surprising, darkly witty, and boldly subversive chronicle of what happens when Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael - all living in parallel worlds - meet. Librarian Jeannine is waiting for marriage in a past where the Depression never ended, Janet lives on a utopian Earth with an all-female population, Joanna is a feminist in the 1970s, and Jael is a warrior with claws and teeth on an Earth where male and female societies are at war with each other. When the four women begin traveling to one another's worlds, their preconceptions on gender and identity are forever challenged.
With "palpable anger... leavened by wit and humor" (The New York Times), Russ both employs and upends genre conventions to deliver a wickedly satiric and exhilarating version of when worlds collide and women get woke.
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