Olsen, Tillie
Average customer rating:
- Brilliant, sad, and wise
- Powerful
- Will someone translate this for me please?
- I Sit Here Typing...
- She has a magic with words..
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Tell Me a Riddle
Tillie Olsen
Manufacturer: Delta
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- Silences
- Yonnondio: From the Thirties
- The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness: A True Story
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- Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing": A Study Guide from Gale's "Short Stories for Students" (Volume 01, Chapter 7)
ASIN: 0385290101
Release Date: 1971-07-15 |
Book Description
This collection of four stories, "I Stand Here Ironing," "Hey Sailor, what Ship?," "O Yes," and "Tell me a Riddle," had become an American classic. Since the title novella won the O. Henry Award in 1961, the stories have been anthologized over a hundred times, made into three films, translated into thirteen languages, and - most important - once read, they abide in the hearts of their readers.
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant, sad, and wise.......2006-08-23
Tillie Olsen packs a lifetime of enforced silences into this slender work of art. These are dense and poetic evocations of Joyce and Woolf, but with an added proletarian knife-thrust to the heart.
Powerful.......2005-03-15
"Hey Sailor, What Ship" is the most powerful, concentrated portrayal of alcoholism that I have ever read. Olsen gets inside the mind of a late-stage alcoholic. Her prose seems to stretch and distort as her main character goes on an unplanned bender while on shore leave.
She shows beautiful restraint, too: there is nothing sensational or mawkish here. I am in awe of this story.
Will someone translate this for me please?.......2004-08-03
Tillie Olson is a brilliant woman. She was way ahead of her time, breaking through the constraints binding talented women back then by her sheer persistence and follow-through, becoming recognized as a notable author. Her insights regarding women authors of the 19th century are brilliant. And her story "Tell Me A Riddle" is a classic.
However, her words sometime seem to start from the middle of a conversation, back up against one another, fall over themselves and then make a circuitous route to sometimes puzzling conclusions. "Tell Me A Riddle" occasionally found me shaking my head as if to dislodge some buzzwords that were way too loud and confusing. Although I understood the gist of this powerful story, I found its delivery to be irritating.
Perhaps that is the way Tillie Olsen writes. However, despite the brilliance of her observations, I find her writing style too discordant.
I Sit Here Typing..........2002-05-06
Amazed by her words and writing - the first story, I STAND HERE IRONING - where a mother is mulling over the changes in her and her daughter's lives and relationship. The stories were published in the 50s originally, but were written in a time-free fashion. Get you a copy, you hear?
She has a magic with words.........1998-11-15
Olsen writes stories that are so powerful, and so well-written, you'll want to read them again and again. Although she uses Jewish culture as a backdrop, her talents bring a universaility to her stories which reminds me of Steinbeck in its power, and Morrison in its complexity.
Average customer rating:
- vivid tale of 1860's Welsh ironworkers in WVA mills
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Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories: Second Edition
Rebecca Harding Davis
Manufacturer: The Feminist Press at CUNY
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- Ruth Hall and Other Writings (American Woman Writers Series)
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- McTeague (Signet Classics)
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ASIN: 0935312390 |
Book Description
You must read this book and let your heart be broken-New York Times Book Review<BR><BR>"One of the earliest recognitions in American literature of the existence of the very poor."-Michele Murray, National Observer<BR><BR><B>Suggested for course use in:</B><BR>19th-century U.S. literature<BR>Working-class studies <BR><BR><B>Rebecca Harding Davis</B> (1831-1910) published 12 books and many serialized novels, stories, and essays.
Customer Reviews:
vivid tale of 1860's Welsh ironworkers in WVA mills.......2004-12-13
I read Life in the Iron Mills for a graduate English course on social-class-imagery in 18th & 19th cen Transatlantic (British and American) literature with Elisabeth Ceppi at Portland State. Ceppi asked us to read closely for the rhetoric of class attributes. There was much class-identifying-imagery to observe in Harding-Davis' 1860's rendering of the lives of impoverished Welsh miners transported into late-slave-era iron foundries of the American North. Mid-19th-cen feminist literature of this social-reform type is deeply informed by Protestant missionary enthusiasm to transform everyone into clean-living bourgeois church-goers. Thus Harding-Davis uses powerful polarities of dirt for workers, clean for bouregoisie, etc. It's so blunt and obvious that she could be accused of writing soap-opera ... as many of her mid-1800's female-writer colleagues were accused, sometimes justly. However her scenes of poverty, disease, and death in the mills are so heart-wrenching that her motives are clearly pure. Now that Tillie Olsen has rescued Harding-Davis' wonderful writing from obscurity, she is good to read for knowledge of American feminist writing history, for understanding of American class polarities in the ante-bellum era, and also for a true, scary story of life with the great unwashed.
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- Why aren't you writing?
- How circumstances affect the creation of literature
- Why aren't you writing?
- a way to get the book
- These essays have had a profound impact on my own work.
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Silences
Tillie Olsen
Manufacturer: Feminist Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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- Tell Me a Riddle
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ASIN: 1558614400 |
Book Description
First published in 1978, Silences single-handedly revolutionized the literary canon. In this classic work, now back in print, Olsen broke open the study of literature and discovered a lost continent-the writing of women and working-class people. From the excavated testimony of authors' letters and diaries we learn the many ways the creative spirit, especially in those disadvantaged by gender, class and race, can be silenced. Olsen recounts the torments of Melville, the crushing weight of criticism on Thomas Hardy, the shame that brought Willa Cather to a dead halt, and struggles of Virginia Woolf, Olsen's heroine and greatest exemplar of a writer who confronted the forces that would silence her. This 25th-anniversary edition includes Olsen's now infamous reading lists of forgotten authors and a new introduction and author preface.
Customer Reviews:
Why aren't you writing?.......2007-05-04
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Why aren't you writing?, September 18, 2003
By Charity Kendall (Ann Arbor, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
Silences by Tillie Olsen
Annotated Bibliography
This book is addressed to the silences in literature and the ways in which writing ceases to be, to the dying and death of capacity. It is about the censorship and self-censorship of woman primarily. The book is written to encourage everyone who is marginalized to find a place for their voice amidst the constrictions of wage-labor and child rearing because their experiences are invaluable. Olsen estimates that only one out of twelve writers in our century are women.Olsen goes into great depth telling the story of Rebecca Harding Davis a nineteenth century woman who spoke out through her literature from isolation both as a woman without encouragement and as a citizen of a backward city, without even a library, in what became West Virginia. She wrote and eventually was introduced to society and made great friends with many prominent writers, however, at age thirty-one she married, and once she had children she let her writing go. Her sympathetic perspective about iron-workers in her town is almost inexplicable in terms of her class. Olsen asks how she got the information she used in her story and remarks on her personal qualities that made her into a popular conversationalist before she retreated/succumbed to motherhood and fulfilled the role of what was properly expected of her. Primarily this book is about the silences of women throughout time. It asks why women have not been enabled to publish, why their lives have usually been overwhelmed by child rearing (their work not allowing time for writing), what is wrong with the world that it doesn't ask-and make it possible-for people to raise and contribute the best that is in them. Olsen explores the idea that women must choose between their art and their fulfillment as a woman and asks what difference it makes to literature if a woman remains childless especially since so many marvels have been created by childless woman. There is a wonderful excerpt from Henry James on the value he placed on his mother's sacrifices to her family.The book is filled with quotes from writers, Katherine Anne Porter writes that writers must not let editors or publishers tamper with their lives because writers are practicing an art while publishers are running a business. Olsen notes that at one time woman were asked to divest themselves of characteristics that might identify them as women if they were to try to write in this man's world. Cynthia Ozick is quoted as saying "...The term "woman writer"...has no meaning, not intellectually, not morally, not historically. A woman is a writer."Common people are asked why they do not write and writers are examined to understand why they have pauses in their otherwise fertile production. This is not about those times a writer takes to regenerate and think creatively, but rather, about those times when it is impossible to write because of the pressures the artist puts on him/herself or allows the world to impose.
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How circumstances affect the creation of literature.......2003-10-17
This scholarly exploration of how silence is imposed on the literary writing of those people hampered by gender, class, religion, or ethnicity was first published in 1978 and has recently been reissues with a new preface. Olsen speaks of the obstacles and frustrations faced when women and other disenfranchised people are driven to put words to paper. The fact that Olsen took 15 years to write this book, squeezing bits of time between working and mothering, goes a long way toward demonstrating exactly what she's talking about.
Why aren't you writing?.......2003-09-19
Silences by Tillie Olsen
Annotated Bibliography
This book is addressed to the silences in literature and the ways in which writing ceases to be, to the dying and death of capacity. It is about the censorship and self-censorship of woman primarily. The book is written to encourage everyone who is marginalized to find a place for their voice amidst the constrictions of wage-labor and child rearing because their experiences are invaluable. Olsen estimates that only one out of twelve writers in our century are women.Olsen goes into great depth telling the story of Rebecca Harding Davis a nineteenth century woman who spoke out through her literature from isolation both as a woman without encouragement and as a citizen of a backward city, without even a library, in what became West Virginia. She wrote and eventually was introduced to society and made great friends with many prominent writers, however, at age thirty-one she married, and once she had children she let her writing go. Her sympathetic perspective about iron-workers in her town is almost inexplicable in terms of her class. Olsen asks how she got the information she used in her story and remarks on her personal qualities that made her into a popular conversationalist before she retreated/succumbed to motherhood and fulfilled the role of what was properly expected of her. Primarily this book is about the silences of women throughout time. It asks why women have not been enabled to publish, why their lives have usually been overwhelmed by child rearing (their work not allowing time for writing), what is wrong with the world that it doesn't ask-and make it possible-for people to raise and contribute the best that is in them. Olsen explores the idea that women must choose between their art and their fulfillment as a woman and asks what difference it makes to literature if a woman remains childless especially since so many marvels have been created by childless woman. There is a wonderful excerpt from Henry James on the value he placed on his mother's sacrifices to her family.The book is filled with quotes from writers, Katherine Anne Porter writes that writers must not let editors or publishers tamper with their lives because writers are practicing an art while publishers are running a business. Olsen notes that at one time woman were asked to divest themselves of characteristics that might identify them as women if they were to try to write in this man's world. Cynthia Ozick is quoted as saying "...The term "woman writer"...has no meaning, not intellectually, not morally, not historically. A woman is a writer."Common people are asked why they do not write and writers are examined to understand why they have pauses in their otherwise fertile production. This is not about those times a writer takes to regenerate and think creatively, but rather, about those times when it is impossible to write because of the pressures the artist puts on him/herself or allows the world to impose.
a way to get the book.......2000-07-11
It is an embarassment that this title is out of print. As a woman, mother, writer, I am reading it now + find it to be an important tool. SO here is my suggestion for obtaining a copy, which may be awful but nonetheless it is how I got my copy: I borrowed it from the library and then told them I lost it + then I paid for it.
These essays have had a profound impact on my own work........1999-08-05
I am not shocked that this wonderful work is out of print -- it's simply history repeating itself. But I do think we should work very hard to get it back into print, probably by one of the small feminist publishers, such as The Feminist Press or Aunt Lute or Spinster -- because they are faithful to their books. However, until that happens, those looking for the essays will find many of them reprinted in various anthologies, including the title essay, "Silences: When Writers Don't Write" in IMAGES OF WOMEN IN FICTION: FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ed. Susan Koppelman, Popular Press, 1972, and still in print and available from the publisher.
Average customer rating:
- An unfinished and lovely work
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Yonnondio: From the Thirties
Tillie Olsen
Manufacturer: Bison Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
- Silences
- Tell Me a Riddle
- Uncle Tom's Children (Perennial Classics)
- Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories: Second Edition
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ASIN: 080328621X |
Book Description
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.
Customer Reviews:
An unfinished and lovely work.......2004-10-04
The majority of Yonnondio was written when Olsen was 19 years old. Her husband discovered its remains among Olsen's papers in 1972 and she herself pieced the current book together and published the still unfinished results in 1974. This newest version of the book includes new material discovered by Olsen that was not included in the 1974 version.
Yonnondio (the title taken from a Walt Whitman poem) is a moving lament for the impoverishment and despair of young families and young women during the depression. Despite the uneveness and jumpiness of the narrative (an artifact of its unfinished status), the small and detailed moments leap out through the pages to capture the reader. It is occasionally a very sad book, and always very beautiful.
It's unusual to be so impressed by an unfinished novel published when the author was still living. Unfortunately, Olsen has published so few works that even something rough and unfinished is a welcome treat. While I understand her insistence that she would not write any new material for the book, it is hard not to read it and wish it were possible to read the finished book. If the fragments are so magnificent, what would the final work have been?
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The Riddle of Life And Death: Tell Me a Riddle / The Death of Ivan Illich (2 By 2)
Tillie Olsen , and Leo Tolstoy
Manufacturer: Feminist Press
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Binding: Paperback
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- Yonnondio: From the Thirties
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ASIN: 1558615369 |
Book Description
Masters of short fiction illumine questions of pain, suffering, medicine, fate, and, most starkly, "Why am I dying?" Circling in psychological time, Tillie Olsen depicts the death of a working-class grandmother, a past proletarian revolutionary in Russia, and how her death devastates her family in mid-twentieth-century America. Leo Tolstoy's cancer-ravaged Czarist bureaucrat weighs his life, searching for semblances of meaning in a linear, realistic story.
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Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother: Mothers on Mothering : A Daybook and Reader
Tillie Olsen
Manufacturer: Feminist Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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- Tell Me a Riddle
ASIN: 1558610081 |
Book Description
   Tillie Olsen's personal selection from the work of 120 writers of prose and poetry, memoir and song, provides a contemporary view of this special relationship from such writers as Louise Bogan, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Grace Paley, Olive Schreiner, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, and Virginia Woolf. This book includes a monthly calendar, applicable to any year, for notes and reminders.
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Yonnondio
Tillie Olsen
Manufacturer: Delta
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0440550122
Release Date: 1988-12-03 |
Customer Reviews:
Praise for the Unlost.......2000-12-08
In spite of the fact that Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio has been accused at several occasions of silencing or not fully developing the women's issues sketched on it, this work is (in my opinion) a great innovation on the part of Olsen. Yonnondio is not only the typical product of the Socialist literary tradition, wherein the expected Proletarian Realism is displayed and developed: Olsen's Feminist concerns were not completely silenced and no "lament for the lost" feminist issues can be raised and wielded against her. By includying her Feminist interests, Olsen was as strong as to differ from the Party's established rules improving in this way Proletarian Realism.
Even though Feminist issues and worries such as the double opression of working-class women, sex-roles or the mother-daughter relationship are not finely-developed or solutions granted, this work provides the reader with clues and hints which will make him/her question many of his/her pre-established preconceptions.
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Tell Me a Riddle
Tillie Olsen
Manufacturer: Delta Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Similar Items:
- Silences
- Yonnondio: From the Thirties
- Tell Me a Riddle
ASIN: B000ILHR9I |
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Mothers & Daughters: An Exploration in Photographs
Tillie Olsen , Julie Olsen Edwards , and Estelle Jussim
Manufacturer: Aperture
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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- Silences
- Tell Me a Riddle
ASIN: 0893813796 |
Book Description
Photographs by Robert Adams, Harry Callahan, Bruce Davidson, Larry Fink, Danny Lyon, Sally Mann, Eudora Welty, and more
Essays by Tillie Olsen and Estelle Jussim
Prose and poetry by Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Alice Walker,
and Eudora Welty
In this extraordinary volume, Mothers & Daughters: An Exploration in Photographs with essays by Tillie Olsen and Estelle Jussim, the most basic and the most mysterious of relationships -- as experienced in contemporary America -- is explored in all of its variety, nuance, and ambivalence.
Nearly ninety photographers contributed penetrating images of mothers and their daughters -- women of every shape, hue, and social station. The result is an emotional mosaic of depth and detail and also a pioneering accomplishment in the history of photography.
The photographers are joined by leading women writers and poets offering a kaleidoscopic gathering of insights and observations.
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YONNONDIO FROM THE THIRTIES
TILLIE OLSEN
Manufacturer: DELL
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GXZFTC |
Authors:
- Omar Khayyam
- Ondaatje, Michael
- O'Neill, Eugene
- Orczy, Emmuska
- O'Reilly, Jackson
- Orlovsky, Peter
- O'Rourke, P. J.
- Orr, Gregory
- Orwell, George
- O'Siadhail, Micheal
Authors
Authors