Tillie Olsen: One Woman Many Riddles

About this book

In Tillie Olsen: One Woman Many Riddles Panthea Reid examines the complex life of this iconic feminist hero and twentieth-century literary giant. Born in Omaha Nebraska Tillie Olsen spent her young adulthood there in Kansas City and in Faribault Minnesota. She relocated to California in 1933 and lived most of her life in San Francisco. From 1962 on she sojourned frequently in Massachusetts New Hampshire Santa Cruz and Soquel California. She was a 1920s "hell-cat"; a 1930s revolutionary; an early 1940s crusader for equal pay for equal work and a war-relief patriot; an ex-GIs ideal wife in the later 1940s; a victim of FBI surveillance in the 1950s;a civil rights and antiwar advocate during the 1960s and 1970s; and a life-long orator for universal human rights. The enigma of Tillie Olsen is intertwined with that of the twentieth century. From the rebellions in Czarist Russia through the terrors of the Depression and the hopes of the New Deal to World War II the Nuremberg Trials and the United Nations founding to the cold war and House Un-American Activities Committee hearings to later progressive and repressive movements the story of Olsens life brings remote events into focus. In her classic short story "I Stand Here Ironing" and her groundbreaking Tell Me a Riddle Yonnondido and Silences Olsen scripted powerful moving prose about ordinary peoples lives exposing the pervasive effects of sexism racism and classism and elevating motherhood and womens creativity into topics of study. Popularly referred to as "Saint Tillie " Olsen was hailed by many as the mother of modern feminism. Based on diaries letters manuscripts private documents resurrected public records and countless interviews Reids artfully crafted biography untangles some of the puzzling knots of the last centurys triumphs and failures and speaks truth to legend correcting fabrications and myths about and also by Tillie Olsen.