Silences - Softcover

Olsen, Tillie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440577985 ISBN 13: 9780440577980

Publisher: Delta/Seymour Lawrence Edition, Dell Publ., 1979

Synopsis

A study of the crucial relationship between circumstances - of sex, economic class, colour, the times and climate into which one is born - and creativity. The book draws on the lives, letters, diaries and testimonies of writers such as Melville, Hardy, Blake and Rimbaud. Tillie Olsen focuses on the financial and cultural pressures which obstructed, or silenced, their work. She then turns to those who have lost most: women writers, their energies deflected into domesticity and motherhood; black American writers, only 11 of whom published more than two novels from 1850-1950.

About this title

About the Author:

Activist and author Tillie Olsen is best known for her prize-winning fiction Tell Me a Riddle and Yonnondio: From the Thirties. She taught at MIT, Stanford, and Amherst. Olsen is an recipient of an Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Literature from the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Review:

"What Tillie Olsen has to say . . . is of primary importance to those who want to understand how art is generated or subverted and to those trying to create it themselves." ―New York Times Book Review

"Tillie Olsen helps those of us condemned to silence―the poor, the racial minorities, the women―find our voices." ―Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

"[Silences is] 'the Bible.' I constantly return to it." ―Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

"As much as I learned from Tell Me a Riddle, I learned even more from Tillie's landmark classic and original essay Silences: When Writers Don't Write, which I read while living in Cambridge in the early '70's, raising a small daughter alone and struggling to write myself." ―Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

"Silences helped me to keep my sanity many a day." ―Gloria Naylor, author of Mama Day

"Silences will, like A Room of One's Own, be quoted where there is talk of the circumstances in which literature is possible." ―Adrienne Rich, author of Diving into the Wreck

"What Tillie Olsen has to say . . . is of primary importance to those who want to understand how art is generated or subverted and to those trying to create it themselves." New York Times Book Review

"Tillie Olsen helps those of us condemned to silence the poor, the racial minorities, the women find our voices." Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

"[Silences is] 'the Bible.' I constantly return to it." Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

"As much as I learned from Tell Me a Riddle, I learned even more from Tillie's landmark classic and original essay Silences: When Writers Don't Write, which I read while living in Cambridge in the early '70's, raising a small daughter alone and struggling to write myself." Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

"Silences helped me to keep my sanity many a day." Gloria Naylor, author of Mama Day

"Silences will, like A Room of One's Own, be quoted where there is talk of the circumstances in which literature is possible." Adrienne Rich, author of Diving into the Wreck

About this edition

• Publisher: Delta/Seymour Lawrence Edition, Dell Publ.
• Publication date: 1979
• ISBN 10: 0440577985
• ISBN 13: 9780440577980
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 300