a biography of the day--tillie olsen

Tillie Olsen


Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912 – January 1, 2007)[1] was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.


Olsen was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Wahoo, Nebraska and moved to Omaha while a young child. There she attended Lake School in the Near North Side through the eighth grade, living among the city's Jewish community. At age 15, she dropped out of Omaha High School to enter the work force. Over the years Olsen worked as a waitress, domestic worker, and meat trimmer. She was also a union organizer and political activist in the Socialist community. In the 1930s she joined the American Communist party. She was briefly jailed in 1934 while organizing a packing house workers' union (the charge was "making loud and unusual noise&quot , an experience she wrote about in The Nation and The Partisan Review. She later moved to San Francisco, California, where in 1936 she met and lived with Jack Olsen, who was an organizer and a longshoreman. She married Jack in 1944, on the eve of his departure for service in World War II.[2][3][4] San Francisco remained her home until her 85th year when she moved to Berkeley, California, to a cottage behind her youngest sibling.

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Olsen first published a book in 1961, Tell Me a Riddle, a collection of four short stories, most linked by the characters in one family. Three of the stories were from the point of view of mothers. "I Stand Here Ironing" is the first and shortest story in the collection, about a woman who is grieving about her daughter's life and about the circumstances that shaped her own mothering. "O Yes" is the story of a white woman whose young daughter's friendship with a black girl is narrowed and ended by the pressures of junior high school. "Hey Sailor, What Ship?", is told by an aging merchant marine sailor whose friendship with a San Francisco family (relatives of the main character in "Tell Me a Riddle&quot is becoming increasingly strained due to his alcoholism. (In later editions of the book, "Hey Sailor, What Ship?" appears as the second story in the collection). The title story is really a novella,and tells the story of an elderly Jewish immigrant couple facing the wife's death and trying to make sense out of the world in which they find themselves. The collection "Tell Me a Riddle has become a staple of college and university literature curricula in the United States. Each of the short stories was featured in Best American Short Stories the year it was published. The novella Tell Me a Riddle was awarded the O. Henry Prize in 1961 for best American short story.

Olsen's non-fiction volume, titled Silences, was an analysis of authors' silent periods in literature, including writer's blocks, unpublished work, and the problems that working-class writers, and women in particular, have in finding the time to concentrate on their art. One of her observations was that prior to the late 20th century, all the great women writers in Western literature either had no children or had full-time housekeepers to raise the children. The second part of the book was a study of the work of little-known writer Rebecca Harding Davis. Olsen researched and wrote the book in the San Francisco Public Library.
[edit] Legacy

Though she published little, Olsen was influential for her treatment of the lives of women and the poor. She drew attention to why women have been less likely to be published authors (and why they receive less attention than male authors when they do publish). Her work received recognition in the years of much feminist political and social activity. It contributed to new possibilities for women writers. Olsen's influence on American feminist fiction has caused some critics to be frustrated at simplistic feminist interpretations of her work.[5] In particular, several critics have pointed to Olsen's Communist past as contributing to her thought.[6] Olsen's fiction awards, and the ongoing attention to her work, is often focused upon her unique use of language and story form, a form close to poetry in in compression and clarity, as well as upon the content.

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Olsen died on January 1, 2007, in Oakland, California.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Olsen