We interviewed relatives…. The discussions were lively; people disagreed about what had happened in the past. My great-grandfather had been murdered in Russia. My great uncle, a man in his late 60s, described the murder to us and as he did, he cried. That moment stayed with me. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Tillie Olsen
Messing Up the Drawing Room: Wharton, Olsen, and the Quest for Validation
by Jessica Levine
In retrospect, I see the nine years I spent working on my Ph.D. as a similar kind of detour, a quest for a lineage that might give me a right to speak. Continue reading
Bloomers At-Large: “Stories of Success”
by Vicraj Gill
Bloomers At Large is a monthly roundup of links that we think might be of interest to Bloom readers. Continue reading
In Her Own Words: Tillie Olsen
by Vicraj Gill
“The fact that human beings do not put up forever with misery, humiliation, degradation, actual physical deprivation but act is a fact which every human being should know about. We are a species that makes changes.” Continue reading
Tillie Olsen and the Writing of Fiction
by Alice Mattison
Like the family I grew up in—my parents were the children of immigrant secular Jews, like some of Olsen’s characters and like Tillie Olsen herself—they said the unspeakable to one another, and continued going about their business together, wounded or not. Continue reading