Marge Piercy Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy's reputation as an important fiction writer began with the appearance of her first published novel, Going Down Fast, in 1969. Especially with Gone to Soldiers (1987) and City of Darkness, City of Light (1996), her genius for transforming history is realized. In all her novels Piercy examines women's roles, especially those traditionally relegated to men.

In an interview published in Ways of Knowing: Essays on Marge Piercy (1991), Piercy defines her fictional concerns by stating that she is "conscious of being very strongly in a women's tradition: an oral Jewish women's tradition transmitted to me by my mother and grandmother, first of all; second, a woman's tradition in writing; third, a contemporary community of women writers from whom I learn and with whom I share the discoveries each of us makes." Although women's issues always underlie Piercy's examination of history and culture and race and ethnicity, her fiction moves beyond particular causes to the question "who can bear hope back into the world," as she asks in Stone, Paper, Knife (1983).

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