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Tillie Olsen, author of 'Tell Me a Riddle,' dies at age 94
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
(01-02) 13:12 PST New York (AP) --
Tillie Olsen, an activist, feminist and an influential and widely taught fiction writer who narrated and experienced some of the major social conflicts of the 20th century, died Monday night, two weeks before her 95th birthday.
A longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Olsen had been in failing health for years, her daughter, Laurie Olsen, told The Associated Press. Tillie Olsen died at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, Calif.
Politically active and class conscious, joined to the world as if every soul were a soul mate, Olsen countered the literary myths of her male peers. She did not immortalize the cowboy or the outlaw, but the woman who stayed home. For her characters, the open road did not lead to freedom, but only to the next job.
Because of the opening phrase "I stand here ironing," from the short story of the same name, she for years received the occasional iron sent by an admirer. She published just two works of fiction — "Tell Me a Riddle" and "Yonnondio" — but she was well known among writers, teachers and feminists, her friends and fans including Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood and Grace Paley.
For much of her early life, she was worker, wife, mother and journalist. She was arrested three times for union activism, and spent several weeks in jail after passing out leaflets to meatpackers.
"The charge was making loud and unusual noises," Olsen recalled with a laugh during a 2001 interview with the AP.
"Well, I'm going to be one of those unhappy people who dies with the sense of what never got written, or never got finished," she said.
"Tell Me a Riddle" was published in 1961. Collecting three short pieces and the title novella, her book begins with a mother ironing, mourns and celebrates an interracial friendship, and celebrates — and mourns — an old, unhappily married couple.
The title piece won an O. Henry Prize for short fiction and those who read the book seemed to urge others to do the same. It became a standard text for feminist studies and other college courses, and an inspiration for believers that literature can coexist with social commentary.
Meanwhile, Olsen finished other books. "Yonnondio," the novel she began writing as a young woman, was finally published in 1973. "Silences," a nonfiction work about the struggle of Olsen and other writers to create, came out in 1978.
Olsen became an important advocate of forgotten women writers. As a girl, she was greatly moved by Rebecca Harding Davis'"Life in the Iron Mills," a Dickensian novella about a factory town published anonymously in the 19th century. Thanks to Olsen, Davis' book and other obscure works were reissued by the Feminist Press, a nonprofit
A memorial service is planned, although no date has been set. Olsen's family requested that instead of flowers, donations be made to the Tillie Olsen Memorial Fund for Human Rights, Public Libraries and Working Class Literature, c/o the San Francisco Foundation, 225 Bush Street #500, San Francisco, CA 94104.
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