On Strike Against God
Joanna Russ, edited by Alec Pollak
The Feminist Press, 2024, 309 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Bailey Hosfelt

On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ has long been relegated to outlier status in the acclaimed feminist science fiction writer’s broader oeuvre. Originally published in 1980, the work went out of print after its 1987 reissue and remained lost to contemporary readers until 2024, save for those who managed to acquire a second-hand copy.

The new edition from The Feminist Press asserts that On Strike is integral to Russ’s literary canon, not marginal. In addition to the book itself, this edition includes an introduction from editor Alec Pollak, essays by Jeanne Thornton and Mary Anne Mohanraj, an interview with Samuel R. Delany, correspondence between Russ and Marilyn Hacker, and archival material, including alternate endings of the book.

While these elements provide critical historical, cultural, and literary insight into the long-overlooked text, it is ultimately Russ’s voice that stands out. A tour de force work of fiction—undoubtedly drawn from Russ’s own experience, as the paratext highlights—On Strike is equal parts rage against the machine and a vulnerable study of the courage necessary to let one’s guard down and come fully alive. This makes it essential, luminescent lesbian fiction for anyone who has articulated and embodied a language they once feared was impossible, especially those just beginning to cross its threshold.

Aptly described by Pollak as Russ’s “attempt to be brave right now” (9), On Strike presents the possibility of love between two women without the alternative reality portal Russ relied on in The Female Man. The work follows Esther, an English professor in an upstate New York college town in the 1970s. Surrounded by infantilizing patriarchy—vocalized by men including patronizing academics, napkin-shredding potential suitors, and pathologizing psychoanalysts singing the praises of Freud, Esther rejects the arbitrary confines of gender and sexuality and attempts to make a place for herself in a world that polices non-normativity.

Esther, both an acerbic cynic and feminist who believes in the possibility of something better, soon becomes enchanted by Jean, a statuesque graduate student and close friend—an affection she finds at once unnerving and captivating.

Struck by Jean, Esther initially determines she must conceal her desire forever because “reality doesn’t allow it” and Jean could never feel the same (98); however, when Jean reciprocates, Esther’s “reality [tears] itself in two, from top to bottom” (99).

Consumed by her attraction to Jean, now reciprocated, Esther begins a brief, world-altering lesbian love affair. She casts aside her fears “because it was such a glorious opportunity to fail” (101).

Describing Esther’s initial sexual encounter with Jean, Russ’s prose is both lyrical: “She’s a vast amount of pinkness—fields and forests. . . My friend is snowfields and mountains. Another world” (104), and matter-of-fact: “I had trotted into the bedroom and brought out my vibrator, hiding it shyly between the couch cushions because it really is a gross little object, about eight inches long, made of white plastic and shaped like a spaceship” (103).

Russ also has an impressive ability to capture the tender yearning Esther feels with precision and desperation: “Waiting for Jean is fortunate: that she will come at all makes you feel blessed. Waiting for Jean is exacerbating: I can’t wait much longer” (110). She also highlights what it feels like to finally yield to something long repressed: “Jean put her arms around me and it felt so good that it made me stammer. Such astonishing softness and everything shaped just right, as if thirty years ago we had been interrupted and were only now resuming” (111); “I fulfilled a daydream of twenty years’ standing and nibbled along her hairline, under her temples and around her ears” (107). She describes the sensory nature of desire: “Her odor is a complicated key, one among millions” (104).

This viscerality of Esther’s character parallels Russ’s experience. For example, in “Not For Years But For Decades,” Russ describes feeling after her first lesbian experience that her “body was well-put-together, graceful, healthy, fine-feeling, and above all, female” (273), a sentiment Esther echoes.

Russ saturates the narrative with humor, philosophical musings, and sharp observations about the unrelenting nature of being a woman, such as an extended party scene where Esther flees an especially horrible assortment of men. Russ also often gravitates toward long sentence constructions that vividly stack up everything Esther is experiencing, allowing the reader to feel the increasing weight building on her shoulders, and decide whether or not they empathize.

While Russ spends ample time on Esther’s ability to turn the unthinkable into the possible, On Strike is not a coming-out narrative alone. It certainly depicts Esther’s and Jean’s short-lived romantic encounter and the aftermath, including Esther crying for two days straight, realizing the worst part of pain is its sheer boredom, and determining whether to confide in other friends. When Jean flees, Esther turns introspective, is riddled with self-doubt, and fears the worst—thrown back into the same homophobia-induced spiral that initially paralyzed her.

Jean’s return, however, ushers in the book’s second beginning. It confirms Esther’s lesbian identity, and equally important, the same is true for Jean. After an excursion shooting rifles in Jean’s backyard so Esther can learn to kill a man—initially where Russ thought of ending the book, which Hacker advised against due to its address to men, not women, as the archival material shows—the world, in all its collective potential and validation, opens once again for Esther. She goes to her first lesbian bar, has sex with another woman, and carries on living.

As a polemic thinker, Russ ends the text turning to the ‘we.’ Initially, that ‘we’ is a shared affirmation among Esther and Jean, despite their changed dynamic. Then, Russ turns to the reader, dropping the narrative into their lap with the invitation, “Let’s be reasonable. Let’s demand the impossible” (168). In doing so, Russ solidifies her ability to reconcile the inherent contradictions between disavowed identity and external affirmation, illuminating a path into the future, should one choose to follow it.

Bailey Hosfelt is a lesbian writer and freelance contributor to Sinister Wisdom. She graduated in 2024 with a master’s degree in gender and women’s studies from UW–Madison, where she wrote a thesis on Dyke TV and queer activist infrastructure. Previously, Bailey lived in Brooklyn, New York and worked as a journalist for local newspapers. Bailey lives in Chicago with her partner and their two cats, Hilma and Lieutenant Governor.