Fiction


 

Oy Pioneer!
A Novel
Marleen S. Barr

Library of American Fiction
Terrace Books, a trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press


An irreverent romp through the groves of academe with a fiercely feminist—and husband-hunting—literary theorist

What would happen if a feminist Jewish wit and scholar invaded David Lodge's territory? Marleen S. Barr, herself a pioneer in the feminist criticism of science fiction, provides a giddily entertaining answer in this feisty novel. Oy Pioneer! follows professor Sondra Lear as she makes her inimitable way through a world of learningat times fantastic, at times all too familiar, often hilarious, and always compulsively interesting.

As if Mel Brooks and Erica Jong had joined forces to recreate Sex and the City for the intellectual set, the story is a heady mix of Jewish humor, feminist insight, and academic satire. Lear is a tenured radical and a wildly ambitious intellectual, but is subject nonetheless to the husband-hunting imperatives of her Jewish mother. Her adventures expand narrative parameters according to Barr's term "genre fission."

Mixing elements of science fiction, fantasy, ethnic comedy, satire, and authentic experience of academic life, Oy Pioneer! is uncommonly fun—a Jewish feminist scholar's imaginative text boldly going where no academic satire has gone before—and bringing readers along for an exhilarating ride.

"The novel is clearly written, often witty, and moves quickly from scene to scene. It takes some familiar elements and gives them a new twist through a blend of genres. It should appeal to feminists, to academics, and to Jewish-American readers." — SFRA Review March 2004, Taylors, SC

"This frothy novel spoofs the unlikely combination of academia, feminism, Jewish mothers, Jewish humor, and Barbara Bush, among others." — Morton I. Teicher, founding dean of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University , and Dean Emeritus, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Marleen S. Barr is Scholar in Residence at The Hadassah Brandeis Institute, a feminist research institute located at Brandeis University. Her many works include Genre Fission and Feminist Fabulation and, as editor, Envisioning the Future and the science fiction issue of the journal PMLA.

For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu

cover of Barr's book is a fun illustration of a woman driving a convertible holding a passport

September 2003
LC: 2003006232 PS
276 pp. 5 x 8 1/2
1 for the cover
ISBN 978-0-299-18910-5
Cloth $19.95 t




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