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Authors: Tillie Olsen

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Page 24
'Requa,'''
Women Writing in America: Voices in Collage
(Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1984), 70.
9
. Yonnondio: From the Thirties
(New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1974), viii. Subsequent references appear in the text.
10. "I Stand Here Ironing," in
Tell Me a Riddle
(New York: Dell Delta, 1989), 12.
11. "The Shaping of a Canon: U.S. Fiction 1960-1975," in Robert van Hallberg, ed.
Canons
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), passim.; quotations 390, 395-396.
12. Parts of this analysis appear in somewhat different form in my essay, "Rereading
Tell Me a Riddle
in the Age of Deconstruction," in Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Elaine Hedges, eds.,
Listening to 'Silences': New Essays in Feminist Criticism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
13. Dorothy Parker, "Book Reviews," review of
Tell Me a Riddle, Esquire
(June 1962): 64.
14. William H. Peden, "Dilemmas of Day-to-Day Living," review of
Tell Me a Riddle, New York Times Book Review
(November 12, 1961): 54.
15. Coles, 30.
16. "Introduction," Kay Hoyle Nelson and Nancy Huse, eds.,
The Critical Response to Tillie Olsen
(New York: Greenwood Press, forthcoming), 16.
17. Cited in Nelson, The Critical Response, 5.
18. Ellen Cronan Rose, "Limning: Or Why Tillie Writes,"
Hollins Critic
13.2 (April 1976): 1-13.
19. Catherine R. Stimpson, "Tillie Olsen: Witness as Servant."
Polit: A Journal for Literature and Politics
1.2 (Fall 1977): 1-12.
20. Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt, "Introduction: Toward a Materialist-Feminist Criticism,"
Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class, and Race in Literature and Culture
(New York: Methuen, 1985).
21. "Literature of Resistance: The Intersection of Feminism and the Communist Left in Meridel Le Sueur and Tillie Olsen," in Lennard J. Davis and M. Bella Mirabella, eds.,
Left Politics and the Literary Profession
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Constance Coiner,
Better Red: The Writing and Resistance of Tillie
 
Page 25
Olsen and Meridel Le Sueur
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
22. Jacqueline A. Mintz, ''The Myth of the Jewish Mother in Three Jewish, American, Female Writers,"
Centennial Review
22 (1978): 346-55; Rose Yalow Kamel, "Riddles and Silences: Tillie Olsen's Autobiographical Fiction," in
Aggravating the Conscience: Jewish-American Literary Mothers in the Promised Land
(New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1988), 81-114.
23. Elenore Lester, "The Riddle of Tillie Olsen,"
Midstream
(January 1975): 75-79; John Clayton, "Grace Paley and Tillie Olsen: Radical Jewish Humanists,"
Response: A Contemporary Jewish Review
46 (1984): 37-52; Bonnie Lyons, "Tillie Olsen: The Writer as Jewish Woman,"
Studies in American Jewish Literature
5 (1986): 89-102; quotation 93.
24. Naomi M. Jacobs, "Earth, Air, Fire and Water in 'Tell Me a Riddle',"
Studies in Short Fiction
23 (Fall 1986): 401.
25. Joanne Trautmann Banks, Letter to Tillie Olsen, May 10, 1990.
26. Judith Kegan Gardiner, "A Wake for Mother: The Maternal Deathbed in Women's Fiction,"
Feminist Studies
4 (June 1978): 146-65; quotation page 163.
 
Page 27
Chronology
1912 or 1913
Tillie Lerner is born in Wahoo, Omaha, or Mead, Nebraska, the second of six children.
1929-1930
Leaves high school after eleventh grade; seeks work in Stockton, California.
1931
Relocates to Midwest; joins Young Communist League; organizes workers in Kansas City, Kansas; contracts incipient tuberculosis.
1932
Moves to Faribault, Minnesota; begins
Yonnondio;
gives birth to daughter, Karla.
1933
Moves back to California; settles permanently in San Francisco.
1934
Arrested for participating in San Francisco Maritime Strike; publishes ''The Iron Throat," "The Strike," "Thousand Dollar Vagrant," "There Is a Lesson," and "I Want You Women Up North to Know."
1935
Attends American Writers Congress in New York.
1936
Begins relationship with Jack Olsen.
1938
Daughter Julie born.
1943
Daughter Katherine Jo born. Marries Jack Olsen.
1948
Daughter Laurie born.
1953-1954
Writes "I Stand Here Ironing"; begins "Hey Sailor, What Ship?" Enrolls in creative writing course at San Francisco State University.
1955-1956
Attends Stanford University on Stegner fellowship in creative writing; completes "Hey
Adapted from
Tillie Olsen
by Mickey Pearlman and Abby H. P. Werlock (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991).
 
Page 28
Sailor, What Ship?'' and "O Yes"; works on "Tell Me a Riddle."
1956
Publishes "Help Her to Believe" ("I Stand Here Ironing").
1957
Publishes "Hey Sailor, What Ship?" and "Baptism" ("O Yes").
1959
Receives Ford Foundation grant in literature.
1960
Publishes "Tell Me a Riddle."
1961
"Tell Me a Riddle" receives O. Henry first prize for best American short story.
Tell Me a Riddle
(the book) published.
1962-1964
Receives fellowship from Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study.
1969-1970
Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence, Amherst College.
1970
"Requa I" published; reprinted in
Best American Short Stories of 1971,
dedicated to Olsen.
1971
Teaches first "women in literature" class and creative writing seminar at Stanford University.
1972
At MacDowell Writers' Colony in New Hampshire, working on recovered manuscript of
Yonnondio
and on biographical interpretation, "Rebecca Harding Davis, Her Life and Times," published in
Life in the Iron Mills.
1973-1974
Writer in residence, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
1974
Publishes
Yonnondio.
Distinguished visiting professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston.
1975-1976
American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters award for distinguished contribution to American letters; Guggenheim Fellowship.
1978
Publishes
Silences.
 
Page 29
1979
Awarded honorary Litt. D. by University of Nebraska (first of six honorary degrees).
1980
International visiting scholar, Norway; Radcliffe centennial visitor and lecturer. Film version of
Tell Me a Riddle,
directed by Lee Grant.
1981
May 18 proclaimed Tillie Olsen Day in San Francisco.
1983
Tillie Olsen week; symposium, 5 Quad Cities Colleges, Iowa and Illinois.
1983-1984
Awarded Senior Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities.
1984
Publishes Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother.
1985-1986
Bunting Fellow, Radcliffe College
1986
Hill Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota.
1987
Gund Professor, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. Regents lecturer, University of California at Los Angeles.
1989
Jack Olsen dies.
1991
Receives Mari Sandoz Award, Nebraska Library Association.
1994
Receives Rea Award for the Short Story ($25,000 to writers contributing significantly to the short story as an art form).
 
Page 31
Tell Me a Riddle
 
Page 32
The edition of ''Tell Me a Riddle" included here is the 1989 Delta reprint, the most recent version of the text. Olsen has gradually revised "Tell Me a Riddle" since its first publication in 1961, most notably to eliminate language like "man" and "mankind," substituting the more generic and inclusive "human" and "humankind." In the first edition, Eva's quotation from the old socialist hymn, "These Things Shall Be," included the line "all that may plant man's lordship firm"; this line was omitted in subsequent versions. These revisions suggest the influence of feminist critiques of sexist language; they support Olsen's inclusive and democratic vision.
The first edition lacked the hopeful and prophetic subtitle, "These Things Shall Be," included in all subsequent versions. Another interesting change is the alteration of Eva's wish to "journey to her self" to a longing instead to "journey on." The motive behind this change may be guessed by noting another emendation to the same passage when Olsen excerpts it for
Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother.
In all editions of the full text, Eva searches for "coherence, transport, meaning." In the daybook, she seeks "coherence, transport, community" (198). Olsen's revisions move the text away from a privileging of the isolated self and develop further the implicit longing for a community and a commitment larger than self or biological family.

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