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 learning—at 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.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
Library of American Fiction Terrace Books, a trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press
About the Author
Marleen S. Barr teaches at Montclair State University and is a visiting scholar at Columbia 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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible!,
By Pam Rivers (USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Oy Pioneer!: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) (Hardcover)
The jacket sounded enticing, but the pages inbetween were incredibly disappointing. It follows the life of a feminist science fiction critique as she embarks on a voracious manhunt throughout Europe. Ostensibly, it is a husband-hunt to pacify her Jewish mother, but she sleeps with any male whether he is single, married, or in a committed gay relationship. Halfway through the novel, various science-fiction elements bizarrely appear in the text. The prose seems rather stilted and depends heavily on stereotypes (Jewish, white southern pigs, etc.) and hackneyed phrases and ideas (i.e. clicking red clogs together).
3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
genuinely witty, genuinely true,
By A Customer
This review is from: Oy Pioneer!: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) (Hardcover)
This book has more wit on one page than many at all. A funny and painful exploration of the modern woman's dilemma - tangled in the expectations of our families, our friends, men and ourselves, Barr resorts to humour rather than tears. Let's hope for a sequel!
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