Tillie Olsen – författare

ONE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'S MOST GIFTED AMERICAN WRITERS 'Tillie Olsen's is a unique voice. Few writers have gained such . . . reverence' MARGARET ATWOOD'Almost unbearable in its harsh poetry and bitter fidelity to lives that are now forgotten' ALICE WALKER'There's no diminishing its fierce bloody-and-literal-mindedness' KIRKUS REVIEWS Tillie Olsen carved a permanent place in American literature on the strength of a single book, Tell Me a Riddle in 1962. This collection was widely hailed as a work of genius, in which the voices of ordinary Americans, black and white, male and female, were given their own rhythms and forms of expression.Yonnondio, Olsen's only novel, was begun during the depression and completed in 1974. It tells the story of the Hollbrooks, an itinerant working-class family in America during the thirties. Brutalised by poverty, they struggle to find a space to breathe, to dream and to create a bettter life for their children. Told in compelling, haunting prose, it is a profound and timeless story of the human will to survive.

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, including the four beautifully crafted, highly celebrated stories originally published as Tell Me a Riddle: “I Stand Here Ironing,” “Hey Sailor, What Ship?,” “O Yes,” and “Tell Me a Riddle.” Also included, for the first time since it appeared in the 1971 Best American Short Stories, is “Requa I.”In these stories, as in all of her work, Olsen set a new standard for the treatment of women and the poor and for the depiction of their lives and circumstances. In her hands, the hard truths about motherhood and marriage, domestic life, labor, and political conviction found expression in language of such poetic intensity and depth that their influence continues to be felt today.An introduction by Olsen’s granddaughter, the poet Rebekah Edwards, and a foreword by her daughter Laurie Olsen provide a personal and generational context for the author’s work.

Yonnondio follows the heartbreaking path of the Holbrook family in the late 1920s and the Great Depression as they move from the coal mines of Wyoming to a tenant farm in western Nebraska, ending up finally on the kill floors of the slaughterhouses and in the wretched neighborhoods of the poor in Omaha, Nebraska.Mazie, the oldest daughter in the growing family of Jim and Anna Holbrook, tells the story of the family's desire for a better life Anna's dream that her children be educated and Jim's wish for a life lived out in the open, away from the darkness and danger of the mines. At every turn in their journey, however, their dreams are frustrated, and the family is jeopardized by cruel and indifferent systems.

A landmark survey of disenfranchised literary voices and the forces that seek to silence them—from the influential activist and author of Tell Me a Riddle.   With this groundbreaking work, Olsen revolutionized the study of literature by shedding critical light on the writings of marginalized women and working-class people. From the excavated testimony of authors’ letters and diaries, Olsen shows us the many ways the creative spirit, especially in those disadvantaged by gender, class, or race, has been suppressed through the years. Olsen recounts the torments of Herman Melville, the shame that brought Willa Cather to a dead halt, and the struggles of Olsen’s personal heroine Virginia Woolf, the greatest exemplar of a writer who confronted the forces that worked to silence her.   First published in 1978, Silences expanded the literary canon and the ways readers engage with literature. This 25th-anniversary edition includes Olsen’s classic reading lists of forgotten authors and a new introduction. Bracing and prescient, Silences remains “of primary importance to those who want to understand how art is generated or subverted and to those trying to create it themselves” (Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review).   “A valuable book, an angry book, a call to action.” —Maxine Hong Kingston   “Silences helped me to keep my sanity many a day.” —Gloria Naylor, author of Mama Day   “[Silences is] ‘the Bible.’ I constantly return to it.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street   “Silences will, like A Room of One’s Own, be quoted where there is talk of the circumstances in which literature is possible.” —Adrienne Rich, author of Diving into the Wreck

Recovered for a new generation of feminist readers, this revolutionary depiction of the American working poor was one of the first literary critiques of industrial capitalism by a nineteenth-century proletarian.Originally published in 1861 in the Atlantic Monthly, ';Life in the Iron Mills' remains a classic of proletarian literature that paints a bleak and incisive portrait of nineteenth-century industrial America. Rebecca Harding Davis was one of the first writers to depict a working class that was exploited and exhausted as capitalism's mills and factories destroyed both the natural environment and the human spirit.Davis's work was first recovered in the 1970s by the Feminist Press and writer Tillie Olsen, and then expanded in the 1980s to be the most comprehensive collection of her work to date. This reissued edition includes an updated critical introduction by labor journalist Kim Kelly, and shares a uniquely prescient capitalist critique with a new generation.

«Tant en la història de la literatura com en el present hi ha la foscor dels silencis: alguns són els silencis d''anys per part dels nostres grans clàssics, alguns són silencis ocults, alguns no arriben a tenir mai forma de llibre. No es tracta de silencis naturals, aquest temps necessari per a la renovació, el guaret, la gestació, en el cicle natural de la creació. Els silencis de què parlo aquí són antinaturals; el desbaratament antinatural d''una cosa que lluita per arribar a existir, però no pot.»Una amiga de la poeta Anne Sexton, un referent per a Margaret Atwood, una influència per al discurs feminista de Maria-Mercè Marçal: Olsen ha deixat empremta en generacions d''escriptores perquè va advertir de les dificultats que té la humanitat, i sobretot les dones, per trobar un espai mental i físic per crear, per tenir veu. Els dos assaigs que aplega aquesta edició, pensats i païts durant més de cinquanta anys, fan una anàlisi tan vigent avui com quan es va formular.