Tell Me a Riddle & Yonnondio
by Tillie Olsen
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Tillie Olsen carved a permanent place in American literature on the strength of a single book, TELL ME A RIDDLE in 1962. This collection was widely hailed as a work of genius, in which the voices of ordinary Americans, black and white, male and female, were given their own rhythms and forms of expression. YONNONDIO, Olsen's only novel, was begun during the depression and completed in 1974. It tells the story of the Hollbrooks, an itinerant working-class family in middle-America during the show more thirties. Brutalised by poverty, they struggle to find a space to breathe, to dream and to create a bettter life for their children. Told in compelling, haunting prose, it is a profound and timeless story of the human will to survive. show lessTags
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Two volumes of incredibly powerful, searing writing, the theme throughout being the tragedy of What Life Does ...to the beautiful baby, the open-minded child, the determined young family... Olsen came from immigrant stock herself, worked menial jobs and was a union activist in early 20th century USA.
"Tell me a Riddle" features four short stories: in one, a mother laments unspecified problems in her teenage daughter's life, but recalls how Life (poor, absent, working mother, a spell in the 'care' system etc) propelled the lovely child into suffering. A drunken sailor visits family while on shore leave; a couple of adolescent female pals- one white, one black - find their friendship crumbles as they enter Junior High and its prejudices; show more and an elderly immigrant woman faces terminal illness...
"Yonnondio" is unfinished (but that in no way detracts- the narrative suffices). It called to mind "Grapes of Wrath" (Steinbeck), "The Dollmaker" (Arnow) and "The Jungle" (Sinclair.) Written in a stream of consciousness manner, the account follows a poor working family from a mining village - where death is a regular occurence - to the idyll to farm life. Life is good - but unprofitable, and they find themselves driven back to the city and the stinking hell of the meat packing industry...
Utterly brilliant writing.which deserves to be much better known. show less
"Tell me a Riddle" features four short stories: in one, a mother laments unspecified problems in her teenage daughter's life, but recalls how Life (poor, absent, working mother, a spell in the 'care' system etc) propelled the lovely child into suffering. A drunken sailor visits family while on shore leave; a couple of adolescent female pals- one white, one black - find their friendship crumbles as they enter Junior High and its prejudices; show more and an elderly immigrant woman faces terminal illness...
"Yonnondio" is unfinished (but that in no way detracts- the narrative suffices). It called to mind "Grapes of Wrath" (Steinbeck), "The Dollmaker" (Arnow) and "The Jungle" (Sinclair.) Written in a stream of consciousness manner, the account follows a poor working family from a mining village - where death is a regular occurence - to the idyll to farm life. Life is good - but unprofitable, and they find themselves driven back to the city and the stinking hell of the meat packing industry...
Utterly brilliant writing.which deserves to be much better known. show less
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19+ Works 1,911 Members
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Tillie Olsen received only a high school education. But because of her success as a writer, she has served as a visiting lecturer and writer-in-residence at a number of colleges, including Amherst College, Stanford University, and MIT. She has received numerous awards for her work, including an O. Henry Award for best show more American short story (1961) and a Guggenheim fellowship (1976-77). The widely anthologized "I Stand Here Ironing" (1961), in the circumstances of its publication and its voice and subject, embodies the concerns of Olsen's literary career. In this monologue of a woman reviewing her relationship to her 19-year-old daughter, Olsen suggests the themes of the blighted potential and wasted talent of working-class women that have preoccupied her throughout her career. As she irons, the woman mournfully meditates on how she may have prevented her daughter's full "flowering" - a flowering that she herself has never had. Most intensely recalled is how she had to leave her infant daughter to go to work after her husband abandoned them. A mother herself by age 19, Olsen did not publish her first work until she was in her forties (though she began to write in her teens) when the pressures of supporting herself and her four children lessened and she felt she had written something worthy of publication. At times considered unrelenting in the despair that she attributes to her characters, Olsen's style is marked by a rhythmic, hypnotic lyricism and an evocative use of language. Olsen later published an introductory essay to the reprint of Rebecca Harding Davis's nineteenth-century novel, Life in the Iron Mills. In Silences (1978), a collection of essays, she addresses directly the various cultural, political, and economic forces that silence women writers and writers from working-class or minority backgrounds. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Virago Modern Classics (363)
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Contains
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Tell Me a Riddle & Yonnondio
- Original publication date
- 1980
- People/Characters
- Mazie Holbrook; Jim Holbrook; Anna Holbrook; Old Man Caldwell
- Important places
- Wyoming, USA; South Dakota, USA
- Related movies
- Tell Me a Riddle (1980 | IMDb)
- Dedication
- For my mother 1885-1956
- First words
- I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Yonnondio! Yonnondio! --unlimn'd they disappear.
- Disambiguation notice
- This edition contains two works. Please do not combine with either individual work.
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- Members
- 38
- Popularity
- 761,272
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.75)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
- 1
