Tillie Olsen is a feminist and working-class author who began writing in the 1930s. Robert Coles commented in The Nation, "Everything Tillie Olsen has written has become almost immediately a classic." Though she is most famous for her shortstory...

Tillie Olsen, feminist and working-class writer,grew up in Wyoming and Nebraska, areas which have not often been the childhood homes of America's Jewish authors. This might explain why, despite the fact that some of her urban working-class characters...

Long recognized as a feminist and a working-class writer, and more recently as a Jewish writer, Tillie Olsen has rarely been considered a writer of the American West. This may be because she deals with global human issues, trying to “recognize...

Tillie Olsen has given voice to constituencies that have traditionally been unrepresented in literature, particularly working-class women. Influenced by her socialist parents, Olsen joined the Young Communist League in 1931 and embarked on a career of...

Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912 – January 1, 2007)[1] was an American writer, associated with the political turmoil of 1930s and the first generation of American...

Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker is placing her literary archive at Emory University's library.The author of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Color Purple," "By the Light of My Father's Smile" and other works visits Emory every couple of years for readings and meetings with...

I remember an occasion in San Francisco, years ago, when the writer Tillie Olsen invited other women writers of the area to dinner at her house, where by way of introducing her guests, in the sweetest possible manner, she went around the room telling a...

I remember an occasion in San Francisco, years ago, when the writer Tillie Olsen invited other women writers of the area to dinner at her house, where by way of introducing her guests, in the sweetest possible manner, she went around the room telling a...

World War II service shaped the lives and careers of authors Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut, and in turn their works were profoundly influential in the Vietnam era.Vonnegut turned his ordeal as a POW during the 1945 allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany, into his 1969...

In the following essay, Pfaelzer discusses the ways in which Olsen uses language and silence in Tell Me a Riddle to represent Eva's journey from alienation to engagement.

In the essay below, Kamel discusses the elements which are common within Olsen's writings.

In the following essay, Lyons argues that while Judaism shapes Olsen's work, her writing is most influenced by her experiences as a woman.

"I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen is a short story about a woman's anxiety in dealing with her daughter, Emily, during the Great Depression. Life's problems are too much to handle to the point she sees only pessimism where Emily is concerned.

In Tillie Olsen's, "I Stand Here Ironing", Maternal Apathy at Its Best, maternal apathy is indeed portrayed at its best. The guilt harbored by Emily's mother in regard to decisions, she felt had to be made, served to distant herself from her daughter.