Tillie's gone, two weeks shy of her 95th birthday. Tillie Olsen —
radical, feminist, mother, writer, native Nebraskan.
When it was first published in 1961, her book of stories Tell Me a Riddle single-handedly revolutionized the lives
of women and the lives of writers. Women read her and said, "I didn't know you could say that." Writers read her and said,
"I didn't know you could say it that way." Her words blew open many doors, broke open windows, opened minds, hearts.
It was 1998 and I was hosting her for a book-signing she was giving at Creighton University and the University of Nebraska
— Omaha. That day, before her appearance, we walked the streets around campus, which turned out to be her old
neighborhood. As a girl walking home from Central High School, she climb up the now-cemented-over stairway to the campus
Observatory, then run by Father Rigge, who always took time to show her around and let her look through the telescope.
While we walked that day, we found the site of her old house, now just a crumbling course of bricks tracing its outline.
She cried when I pried up a piece of brick for her.
I had read and admired every page of Tell Me a Riddle many times over, but it was only walking with Tillie that I
realized most of the settings for the stories were right there in Creighton's backyard — her old house, the
24th-Street church that was the setting for "Say Yes." I won't claim to have been a friend exactly, but by the end
of her visit to Omaha when I played host, she came to call me "Spencer dear." I don't know if she knew whether it was
my first or last name, but I was charmed all the same.
She never published much. Tell Me a Riddle was followed by a book of essays, Silences, that galvanized the
feminist movement. Her third book, a novel, Yonnondio: From the Thirties, would remain her last published book.
In a culture that prizes productivity, three books might seem to be a small output for a life of writing. But maybe it's
enough when the books are as good as hers. For one thing, she wrote about the powerless — about women, minorities,
and the working poor — at a time when it wasn't popular to do so. And she did it in a voice, in points-of-view, and
with techniques that would revolutionize the way stories were told. Young writers may not know her work now, but that's
because she was never a self-promoter. If you haven't read her, get to it.
And now she's gone. I'll remember a lot of things about her. How she could write an entire letter in a space the size of
a postage stamp. How during a reading she could never resist a side-story explaining life in the 30s, sometimes losing
track of the reading she was supposed to be giving, but all of it fascinating. How her desire to see the bayberry bushes
on the grounds of a local insurance company nearly got us arrested.
She was a living, breathing story, and you came away from any encounter with her richer, wiser, more aware. And I'm
broken-hearted that she's gone.
I didn't stay in touch with her as much as I probably should have. I didn't think she needed to hear too often from one
more fumble-tongued fan. But I regret that now. I wish I had written more often, called even. Just to tell her again how
much I admire her writing, her life, her way of seeing the world, her dance with words.
To learn more about Tillie Olsen's life and work, click here.
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