Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio?

Question:

Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio?

I recently finished the novel "Yonnondio from the thirties" by Tillie Olsen and was totally engrossed into it. Wondering what happened to the characters next (the novel is unfinished) is literally keeping me up at nights. I have heard some passages from (what were supposed to be) the following chapters were written and have survived. Anyone have any idea where they might be available or at least any information on what happens next?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912–January 1, 2007) was an American writer, associated with the political turmoil of 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.

Olsen was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Omaha, Nebraska. She dropped out of Omaha Central High School to enter the work force, and over the years worked as a waitress, domestic worker, and meat trimmer. She was also a union organizer and political activist, and in the 1930s she was briefly a member of the American Communist party. She was briefly jailed in 1934 while organizing a packinghouse workers' union, an experience she wrote about in The Nation and The Partisan Review.

She attempted to introduce the challenges of her own life and the political circumstances of the time into a novel which she worked on during the 1930s, begun when she was only 19. Only an excerpt of the first chapter was published, in The Partisan Review in 1934, and it led to a contract with Random House. However, she abandoned the book, owing to work, childrearing, and household responsibilities. Decades later, the novel was eventually published, unfinished, as Yonnondio: From the Thirties in 1974. Her first published book, however, was a collection of four short stories, Tell Me a Riddle, published in 1961. Three of the stories are from the point of view of mothers: "I Stand Here Ironing" is the first and shortest story in the collection, about a woman who is estranged from her daughter. "O Yes" is the story of a white woman whose young daughter's friendship with a black girl is becoming fragile, to her mother's concern. The title story, the longest in the collection, is the story of the decline of an elderly immigrant woman, the matriarch of an assimilated American family she has difficulty understanding. It was awarded the O. Henry Prize in 1961 for best American short story of the year. The fourth story, "Hey Sailor, What Ship?", is from the point of view of an aging sailor whose friendship with a San Francisco family (relatives of the main character in "Tell Me a Riddle") is becoming increasingly strained. Tell Me a Riddle, Olsen's only completed book of fiction, has become a staple of college and university literature curricula in the United States.

Her non-fiction volume, entitled Silences, is an analysis of authors' silent periods in literature, including writer's blocks, unpublished work, and the problems that working-class writers and women in particular have in finding the time to concentrate on their art. One of her findings was that all of the great women writers in Western literature prior to the late 20th century either had no children or had full-time housekeepers to raise the children. The second part of the book is a study of the work of little-known writer Rebecca Harding Davis. The book was famously researched and written in the San Francisco Public Library.

Though she published very little, Olsen was enormously influential for her treatment of the lives and thoughts of women and the poor and for drawing attention to why women have been less likely to be published authors (and why they receive less attention when they do). The extent of her centrality to American feminist fiction has caused some critics to be frustrated at simplistic feminist interpretations of her work.In particular, several critics have pointed to a greater role than is traditionally seen for Olsen's Communist past.

Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Margaret Atwood attributed Ms. Olsen??s relatively small output to her full life as a wife and mother, a ??grueling obstacle course?? experienced by many writers.

??It begins with an account, first drafted in 1962, of her own long, circumstantially enforced silence,?? Ms. Atwood wrote. ??She did not write for a very simple reason: A day has 24 hours. For 20 years she had no time, no energy and none of the money that would have bought both.??

Among the honors bestowed upon Olsen was the Rea Award for the Short Story, in 1994, for a lifetime of outstanding achievement in the field of short story writing.

Olsen died on January 1, 2007, in Oakland, California.