Tillie Olsen

Activist, feminist, and writer

• Born: January 14, 1912
• Birthplace: Omaha, Nebraska
• Died: January 1, 2007
• Place of death: Oakland, California

Though Olsen’s body of literary work is small, her contributions to the short-story genre and to the advancement of women’s rights are significant.

Early Life

Tillie Olsen (TIH-lee OHL-suhn) was born to Russian Jewish immigrants Samuel and Ida Beber Lerner on January 14, 1912, in Omaha, Nebraska. Her parents had fled Russia after the failed 1905 revolution. Olsen was the second of six children. Her father worked a variety of labor-intensive jobs and later became a member of the Socialist Party of America. He was actively involved in organizing laborers and was eventually given the post of Nebraska Socialist Party state secretary. During his involvement with the Socialist Party, many other Jewish Socialists and activists visited the Lerner home, exposing young Olsen to their fervor.

Olsen was often ill as a child, and she often missed school. She was a timid child who stuttered, but she was responsible and intelligent, helping raise her four younger siblings and doing menial jobs to help support the family. By the time she reached Omaha Central High School, she was widely read and had a strong political viewpoint. Chancing on a copy of Rebecca Harding Davis’s story “Life in the Iron Mills,” Olsen was encouraged to use her own writing skills to expose the problems that working-class people faced. Unfortunately, Olsen’s formal education ended as the Great Depression began, and she had to join that same labor force that she was so passionate about helping. Though her formal education was complete, she continued to educate herself by reading books she checked out of the local library.

Life’s Work

Olsen’s mature activism began when enrolled in the Young Communist League in 1931. As a member of the party, she protested labor problems on many occasions, and she was jailed at least twice. While she was imprisoned the first time in 1931 for participating in a labor movement for packinghouse workers, she became ill with pleurisy, which later led to chronic health problems. The second jail sentence was the result of her involvement in the San Francisco maritime strike on July 5, 1934. Though the bail fee was set at an exorbitant one thousand dollars, the experience did produce two of her early published writings: the essays “Thousand-Dollar Vagrant,” an account of her meeting with the judge, and “Literary Life in California,” a report of her arrest. Both pieces were published in separate issues of The New Republic that same year.

Shortly after her first imprisonment, Olsen moved to Faribault, Minnesota, where she had her first daughter, Karla, in 1932. She also began writing her first, and only, novel, Yonnondio. The opening chapter of the novel, “The Iron Throat,” was published in a 1934 issue of Partisan Review. Though the novel was never completed, having been misplaced for many years, it was finally published in 1974 as Yonnondio: From the Thirties. Critics have compared this work to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906).

In 1936, Olsen moved in with Jack Olsen, a fellow member of the Young Communist League, and she married him in 1944. They had three daughters together: Julie in 1938, Katherine Jo in 1943, and Laurie in 1948. These years were hard ones for Olsen, and she wrote very little, claiming that raising children, working, and running a household took up too much time and energy.

She began writing again in the early 1950’s. The short story “I Stand Here Ironing” was the first of the newer pieces, and “Hey Sailor, What Ship?” followed. In 1955, she enrolled in a writing course at San Francisco State College. The next year she was given a Stegner Fellowship, named after writer Wallace Stegner, at Stanford University, and she was composed “O Yes.” In 1959, Olsen was given a grant from the Ford Foundation, which allowed her to commit herself to writing, but she was concerned that the grant came so late in her life. “Tell Me a Riddle” was written in 1960; it would become the title piece for a collection that contained all four of these stories. “Requa I” was her final short story; it appeared in 1971. In 1978, she published Silences, a nonfiction book about the reasons women do not create as much as they have the potential to produce.

Over the next quarter of a century, Olsen was given many opportunities. She served as a lecturer, a reader, a visiting professor, and a writer for a number of higher education institutions, including Amherst College, Radcliffe College, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts (Boston), and the University of California (San Diego and Los Angeles). She also received many fellowships, several honorary degrees, and a variety of awards. In 1994, she was given the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime of achievement. Olsen, who had been in poor health for a number of years, died on January 1, 2007, in Oakland, California. She was ninety-four years old.

Significance

Olsen is remembered for her talent in writing and for her activism. She worked tirelessly to promote the rights of laborers and women. She had an ability to create a depth of characterization that overpowers other literary aspects. Further, her interest in sharing the reasons art is sometimes not fulfilled opened a discussion about why many writers have silent periods between compositions. Olsen was also instrumental in bringing Harding’s Life in the Iron Mills to public attention, in an effort to improve conditions for downtrodden workers, and she encouraged interest in a number of little-known writers. Olsen’s works gave a voice to women and working-class people.

Bibliography

Frye, Joanne S. Tillie Olsen: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1995. Historical and political analysis of Olsen’s 1962 collection of four short stories. Includes an overview of scholarship on Olsen’s work.

Hoofard, Jennifer M. “Tillie Olsen.” In American Writers: A Collection of Biographies, Supplement XIII: Edward Abbey to William Jay Smith, edited by Jay Parini. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. Brief biographical article covering Olsen’s youth and middle years. Provides information about her activism and writing.

Nelson, Kay Hoyle, and Nancy Huse, eds. The Critical Response to Tillie Olsen. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. Series of critical essays about Olsen’s works from the 1930’s through the 1990’s.

Pearlman, Mickey, and Abby H. P. Werlock. Tillie Olsen. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Easy-to-read study of Olsen’s life and major works. Includes an interview with Olsen.

Reid, Panthea. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Examines Olsen’s many identities and considers her life as a metaphor for twentieth century America.