Tillie Olsen - Writing

Writing

She attempted to introduce the challenges of her own life and contemporary social/political circumstances into a novel which she began in the 1930s, when she was only 19. Although only an excerpt of the first chapter was published in The Partisan Review in 1934, it led to a contract for her with Random House. Olsen abandoned the book, however, due to work, child rearing, and household responsibilities. Decades later in 1974, her unfinished novel was published as Yonnondio: From the Thirties.

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") 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volume, titled Silences, was an analysis of authors' silent periods in literature, including writer's blocks, unpublished work, and the problems that working-class writers, and women in particular, have in finding the time to concentrate on their art.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.