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Rosenbaum, Jonathan, and Patricia O'Conner-Seger, eds., with Carol Gendler.
Our Story: Recollections of Omaha's Early Jewish Community 1885-1925,
Omaha Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, 1981.
Rosenfelt, Deborah. "From the Thirties: Tillie Olsen and Radical Tradition."
Feminist Studies
7 (Fall 1981): 371-406.
Rubin, Naomi. "A Riddle of History for the Future."
Sojourner
(June 1983): 3-4, 18.
 
Page 131
Smith, Sidonie. A Poetics of Women's Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self Representation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Zelenka, Julia. ''Old Neighborhood Stays With Her." Omaha
World Herald.
August 5, 1980.
 
Page 133
DEBORAH SILVERTON ROSENFELT
From the Thirties:
Tillie Olsen and
the Radical Tradition
This paper focuses on Tillie Olsen's experience as a woman, a writer, and an activist in the Old Left of the 1930s. It grew out of my view of Olsen's life and art as an important link between that earlier radical tradition and contemporary feminist culture. This perspective, of course, is only one lens through which to look at her life and art, magnifying certain details and diminishing others. In dwelling on Olsen's political activities and in placing her work in the context of a ''socialist feminist" literary tradition, I have, as Olsen herself has pointed out to me, given insufficient weight to two poles of her life and art. On the one hand, there was the dailiness of her life, characterized most of the time less by political activism or participation in the leftist literary milieu than by the day-to-day struggles of a first-generation, working-class mother simply to raise and support a familythe kind of silencing that takes priority in all of her own writings. On the other hand, there was her sense of affinity as an artist with traditions of American and world literature that lie outside the "socialist feminist" literary tradition as I have defined it.
The latter point, especially, needs clarification. Obviously, literary traditions are not demarcated by clear boundaries. Some works of literature, by virtue of their art and scope, transcend the immediate filiations of their authors to become
From
Feminist Studies 7,
no. 3 (Fall 1981): 371-406.
 
Page 134
part of a ''great tradition" of their ownnot in an idealistic sense, but as models which inspire and challenge later writers, regardless of their political commitments. Olsen's work is part of this "great tradition," both in its sources and in its craft. Then too, in some eras of intense political activity, such as the thirties or the sixties, writers whose essential concerns are not explicitly political or whose work takes other directions when the era has ended may be temporarily drawn into a leftist political milieu. Edna St. Vincent Millay, Katherine Anne Porter, Mary McCarthy, and Dorothy Parker were among the women writers associated, in the thirties, with the Left; in our own era, writers like Adrienne Rich and Susan Griffinclose to Olsen both as friends and as artistsinitially shared connections and visions with the New Left, subsequently articulating values and world views partly in opposition to it.
Yet the definition of a "socialist feminist" tradition is, I think, legitimate and useful, for it does identify writers who, like Olsen, shared a certain kind of consciousness, an engagement with the political issues of their day, and an involvement in a progressive political and cultural movement. It also enables us to examine the connections between the radical cultural traditions of the past and those our own era is creating, questioning that earlier heritage when necessary, but acknowledging also the extent to which we as contemporary feminists are its heirs.
1
I could not have written this paper without Tillie Olsen's assistance, although its emphasis, its structure, and any errors in fact and interpretation are my responsibility. Over the past two years, Olsen has granted me access to some of her personal papersjournals, letters, and unpublished manuscripts. Both she and her husband, Jack Olsen, have been generous in sharing their recollections of life in the thirties. In fall 1980, Olsen responded with a detailed critique to an earlier version of this paper.
2
Some of her comments called for a simple correction of factual inaccuracies; some questioned my interpretations of her experience. The paper in its present form incorporated many, although not all, of her suggestions for revision.
This paper, then, is part of an ongoing dialogue about issues that matter very much to both Tillie Olsen and myself:
 
Page 135
the relationship of writing to political commitment: the ''circumstances"a favorite Olsen wordof class and sex and their effect on sustained creative activity, literary or political; and the strengths and weaknesses of the radical cultural tradition in this country.
·
·
·
Tillie Olsen's fiction and essays have been widely acknowledged as major contributions to American literature and criticism. Her work has been particularly valued by contemporary feminists, for it has contributed significantly to the task of reclaiming women's achievements and interpreting their lives. In 1961, she published the collection of four stories,
Tell Me a Riddle
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott), each story focusing on the relationships between family members or friends; each revealing the injuries inflicted by poverty, racism, and the patriarchal order; each celebrating the endurance of human love and will. In 1974, she published
Yonnondio: From the Thirties
(New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence), the first section of a novel about a working-class family, told mostly from the point of view of the daughter, Mazie. Begun in the thirties, then put away, this novel was finally revised forty years later "in arduous partnership" with "that long ago young writer."
3
In 1978, she published her collected essays in
Silences
(New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence), a sustained prose poem about the silences that befall writers and those who would be writersespecially, although not exclusively, women; especially, although not exclusively those who must also struggle for sheer survival. In addition to being a gifted writer and critic, Olsen is also a teacher who has helped to democratize the literary canon by calling attention to the works of Third World writers, working-class writers, and women.
Olsen's importance to contemporary women who read and write or who write about literature is widely acknowledged. Yet although her work has been vital for feminists today, and although one article does discuss her background in some depth,
4
few of Olsen's contemporary admirers realize the extent to which her consciousness, vision, and choice of sub-

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