Tillie Olsen: Biographical Sketch and ‘Thirties’ Publications

Abstract This chapter has three sections. The first sketches Tillie Olsen’s biography. The second places Olsen in the context of the ‘30s Communist Party, extending the background provided by Chapters 1 and 2. The third discusses her publications from the ‘30s, which all appeared in I 934, when she was only 21. (Because it later became part of Yonnondio, “The Iron Throat,” published as a short story in 1934, is discussed in Chapter 5.) Olsen’s 1934 publications-”! Want You Women Up North to Know,” “There Is a Lesson,” “Thousand-Dollar Vagrant,” and “The Strike” -to an extent resemble Le Sueur’s reportage. Whereas the content is culturally and politically agitational, the discursive model has been borrowed from dominant modes of representation, although Olsen does modify those modes more than Le Sueur. These texts foreground the message rather than the production of meaning, although these two categories are less distinct than orthodox ‘30s Marxists believed. Frankly tendentious, Olsen’s early ‘30s texts are marked by closure-that is, a restricting of meaning potentially available from the text. Like “Women on the Breadlines” and “I Was Marching,” Olsen’s writing during this period was intended to spark political resistance once the reader “experienced” the reported conditions or event. At the same time, however, its didacticism, like that of Le Sueur’s more tendentious writing, actually limits involvement by undercutting the reader’s role as an active producer of meaning.