"Tell Me a Riddle": Tillie Olsen / Edition 1

by Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt

Overview

“Tell Me a Riddle” renders an unforgettable portrait of a working class couple when the gender determined differences in their experiences of poverty and familial life give rise to bitter conflict after almost four decades of marriage.  As she dies from cancer, Eva, the protagonist, recollects a revolutionary past that both critiques and offers hope for the present.  Deborah Rosenfelt’s introduction and the essays in this volume survey the critical reception of this highly acclaimed story, analyze its biographical and historical contexts, examine the text’s language, structure, spiritual and moral significance, and illuminate Olsen’s relationship to the American midwest, the American left, and the Jewish enlightenment tradition.

This casebook includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of Olsen’s life, an authoritative text of “Tell Me a Riddle,” relevant essays by Olsen, seven critical essays, and a bibliography.

The contributors are: Joanne Trautmann Banks, Constance Coiner, Rachel Blau Duplessis, Mara Faulkner, Elaine Orr, Linda Ray Pratt, and Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813521374
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	05/01/1995
Series:	Women Writers: Texts and Contexts
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt is Professor of Women's Studies and Director of the Curriculum Transformation Project at the University of Maryland-College Park. She is editor and co-editor of a number of books, including Feminist Criticism and Social Change and Teaching Women's Literature from a Regional Perspective.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt
Chronology

Tell Me a Riddle - Tillie Olsen
Background to the Story:
Silences in Literature - Tillie Olsen
Personal Statement - Tillie Olsen

Critical Essays:
The Circumstances of Silence: Literary Representation and Tillie Olsen's Omaha Past - Linda Ray Pratt
From the Thirties: Tillie Olsen and the Radical Tradition - Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt
A Feminist Spiritual Vision - Elaine Neil Orr
Death Labors - Joanne Trautmann Banks
Motherhood as a Source and Silencer of Creativity - Mara Faulkner
To "Bear My Mother's Name": Kunstlerromane by Women Writers - Rachel Blau Duplessis
"No One's Private Ground": A Bakhtinian Reading of Tillie Olsen's Tell Me a Riddle - Constance Coiner

Selected Bibliography
Permissions
 

Editorial Reviews

Olsen, the writer, teacher, and 1930s left-wing activist, was born in 1912 of East European parents committed to Socialist and Jewish enlightenment values. Her work reflects the discrimination and marginalization she felt as a young girl growing up in Omaha, Nebraska. Like other women of the time, Olsen was underappreciated even in leftist circles, which suffered much the same gender bias as the larger society. "Tell Me a Riddle," which received the O. Henry first prize for best American short story in 1961, is reprinted in this volume (edited by Rosenfelt, women's studies, Univ. of Maryland) along with seven critical essays by feminist literary scholars, previously published in books or journals, that give a contemporary appreciation to Olsen's work. Highly recommended for multicultural collections, women's studies, and all American literature collections.Lesley Jorbin, Cleveland State Univ. Lib.

Library Journal