Tell me a riddle, requa I, and other works
A century after her birth, Tillie Olsen's writing is as relevant as when it first appeared; indeed, the clarity and passion of her vision and style have, if anything, become even more striking over time. Collected here for the first time are several of Olsen's nonfiction pieces about the 1...
| Main Author: | Olsen, Tillie. |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | Olsen, Laurie., Edwards, Rebekah. |
| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Lincoln, NE :
Bison,
2013.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
A century after her birth, Tillie Olsen's writing is as relevant as when it first appeared; indeed, the clarity and passion of her vision and style have, if anything, become even more striking over time. Collected here for the first time are several of Olsen's nonfiction pieces about the 1930s, early journalism pieces, and short fiction. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: |
163 pages |
| ISBN: |
9780803245778 0803245777 |
| Author Notes: |
The widely anthologized "I Stand Here Ironing" (1961), in the circumstances of its publication and its voice and subject, embodies the concerns of Olsen's literary career. In this monologue of a woman reviewing her relationship to her 19-year-old daughter, Olsen suggests the themes of the blighted potential and wasted talent of working-class women that have preoccupied her throughout her career. As she irons, the woman mournfully meditates on how she may have prevented her daughter's full "flowering" - a flowering that she herself has never had. Most intensely recalled is how she had to leave her infant daughter to go to work after her husband abandoned them. A mother herself by age 19, Olsen did not publish her first work until she was in her forties (though she began to write in her teens) when the pressures of supporting herself and her four children lessened and she felt she had written something worthy of publication. At times considered unrelenting in the despair that she attributes to her characters, Olsen's style is marked by a rhythmic, hypnotic lyricism and an evocative use of language. Olsen later published an introductory essay to the reprint of Rebecca Harding Davis's nineteenth-century novel, Life in the Iron Mills. In Silences (1978), a collection of essays, she addresses directly the various cultural, political, and economic forces that silence women writers and writers from working-class or minority backgrounds. (Bowker Author Biography) |