Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen

First published: 1974

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: Early 1930’s

Locale: Wyoming, South Dakota, and a midwestern city

Principal characters

• Anna Holbrook, a mother of five young children
• Jim Holbrook, a coal miner, husband, and father
• Mazie and Bess, their daughters
• Will, ,
• Jimmie, and
• Ben, their sons

The Story:

Anna and Jim Holbrook and their four children—Mazie, Will, Jimmie, and baby Ben—live in a rural Wyoming coal-mining community, where Jim toils as an underground miner. They survive somehow in abject poverty, with most of Jim’s wages paid in scrip, usable only at the company store. Jim uses much of the rest of his wages on liquor to cope with the physical and mental strain of long hours underground. The townspeople live in dreaded anticipation of the whistle that announces another underground explosion and cave-in and the death of more miners. They all worry because the mine superintendent’s nephew, the new fire boss, never makes the trips to detect the possible presence of methane gas, which explodes when built up.

While Anna slaves with the housework and child care and futilely dreams of an education and better life for the children, Jim dreams the same while he labors for coal that should be red, not black, because it is gotten with the blood of miners. Mazie wonders about education and why blackness is so prevalent—the coal, the miners’ faces and hands, the night—and contrasts it with fire and the sun and the redness of Sheen McEvoy’s face, which had been blown off in an explosion, making him crazy.

The earth sucks Jim in to haul out coal to make the rich richer, but Jim and Anna plan to leave the mines for farming in the Dakotas. Before they can go, however, McEvoy grabs Mazie and carries her to a mine shaft. In his deranged thought he intends her as a virginal sacrifice to the mine, so that the mine will stop killing miners. The night watchman saves Mazie and knocks the crazed McEvoy down the shaft instead. Soon after, the Holbrooks depart for South Dakota, hoping for a better life there.

Life is indeed better in South Dakota, in some ways, with pure, soft air and a sense of freedom that makes Jim and Anna sing. Still, they are tenant farmers, and as they had been warned, they cannot survive at it because the bank takes everything. Even after slaving for a year at farming, they end up still owing the bank, which takes away the Holbrook farm and animals.

Still, especially for Mazie, the natural beauty, the birds, and the winds of South Dakota uplift her, despite the continued poverty. An educated South Dakotan encourages her toward schooling, and even gives her the needed books. However, Jim sells the books because the family is near starvation. Anna has another baby, Bess, a hungry mouth to feed with insufficient supplies. Fights between Jim and Anna worsen because of the poverty, and the horribly cold winters and forced indoor life with the children, who are always hungrier and thinner, lead them to move again, this time to a midwestern city—probably Chicago. Jim thinks he can find work in the thriving stockyards and slaughterhouses. Before leaving for the city, Mazie sleeps all night in the hay. Anna, too, breathes in the hay’s good smell so she will never forget it.

In sharp contrast to the farm, the city stinks horribly; so, too, does the old house in which the family has to live. Jim cannot find work in a slaughterhouse and must work as a sewer repairmen, bringing home even more stink. Anna becomes pregnant again, but miscarries and nearly dies after Jim forces her to have sex. Jim then retreats into a fantasy world and neglects the children.

Will and Mazie, virtually unsupervised, fail in school, and the entire family nearly starves. Illness necessitates a doctor visit, during which they are told everything they need to make the children well; they are not told how to get the money to pay for the needed care. The powerlessness, helplessness, and sickness of the family continues. A stifling hot summer, in which the temperature stays above 100 degrees, is worsened by a lack of air-conditioning; there is no money even for fans. The impoverished neighborhood worsens, and the elderly and young are dying from the heat. A man has a heart attack at work; his pay is docked and he is charged for use of the company ambulance.

Almost miraculously, though, baby Bess brings hope by energetically and defiantly, and with great satisfaction repeatedly, banging a fruit-jar lid on the table, making the family laugh and giving them relief, hope, and some sort of transcendence from their misery. Will brings a radio home, marking the first time the family has experienced its magic and bringing further relief. Anna tells Jim that the air is changing, that the oppressive heat is ending, and that tomorrow will be better.

Bibliography

Cardoni, Agnes Toloczko. Women’s Ethical Coming-of-Age: Adolescent Female Characters in the Prose Fiction of Tillie Olsen. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998. A survey of Olsen’s adolescent female characters, comparing and contrasting their milieux. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Coiner, Constance. Better Red: The Writing and Resistance of Tillie Olsen and Meridel Le Sueur. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. A detailed discussion of the leftist political vision of Olsen as reflected in her personal life, her public activities, in Yonnondio, and in her other writings.

Faulkner, Mara. Protest and Possibility in the Writing of Tillie Olsen. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. A technical, sophisticated analysis of Olsen’s compressed, poetic writing style and of the historical and literary context of her works.

Martin, Abigail. Tillie Olsen. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1984. A good, brief introduction to Olsen’s Yonnondio and short-story collection Tell Me A Riddle (1961), with effective comparison to other writers’ works.

Nelson, Kay Hoyle, and Nancy Huse, eds. The Critical Response to Tillie Olsen. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. A comprehensive collection of essays responding to and analyzing Olsen’s major writings, including Yonnondio.

Orr, Elaine Neil. Tillie Olsen and a Feminist Spiritual Vision. Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 1987. A thorough, effective analysis of the feminism that is fundamental to all of Olsen’s writings.

Pearlman, Mickey, and Abby H. P. Werlock. Tillie Olsen. Boston: Twayne, 1991. A good general introduction to all of Olsen’s writings, with a chapter on Yonnondio.

Reid, Panthea. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010. A comprehensive biographical account of Olsen’s life and work based on diaries, letters, manuscripts, private documents, resurrected public records, and interviews. Also corrects fabrications and myths about Olsen.