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Silences
A landmark survey of disenfranchised literary voices and the forces that seek to silence them—from the influential activist and author of Tell Me a Riddle . With this groundbreaking work, Olsen revolutionized the study of literature by shedding critical light on the writings of marginalized women and working-class people. From the excavated testimony of authors’ letters and diaries, Olsen shows us the many ways the creative spirit, especially in those disadvantaged by gender, class, or race, has been suppressed through the years. Olsen recounts the torments of Herman Melville, the shame that brought Willa Cather to a dead halt, and the struggles of Olsen’s personal heroine Virginia Woolf, the greatest exemplar of a writer who confronted the forces that worked to silence her. First published in 1978, Silences expanded the literary canon and the ways readers engage with literature. This 25th-anniversary edition includes Olsen’s classic reading lists of forgotten authors and a new introduction. Bracing and prescient, Silences remains “of primary importance to those who want to understand how art is generated or subverted and to those trying to create it themselves” (Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review ). “A valuable book, an angry book, a call to action.” —Maxine Hong Kingston “ Silences helped me to keep my sanity many a day.” —Gloria Naylor, author of Mama Day “[ Silences is] ‘the Bible.’ I constantly return to it.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street “ Silences will, like A Room of One’s Own , be quoted where there is talk of the circumstances in which literature is possible.” —Adrienne Rich, author of Diving into the Wreck
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
68 people are currently reading
2428 people want to read
About the author
Tillie Olsen
47 books132 followersTillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912 – January 1, 2007) was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.
Though she published little, Olsen was very influential for her treatment of the lives of women and the poor. She drew attention to why women have been less likely to be published authors (and why they receive less attention than male authors when they do publish). Her work received recognition in the years of much feminist political and social activity. It contributed to new possibilities for women writers. Olsen's influence on American feminist fiction has caused some critics to be frustrated at simplistic feminist interpretations of her work. In particular, several critics have pointed to Olsen's Communist past as contributing to her thought. Olsen's fiction awards, and the ongoing attention to her work, is often focused upon her unique use of language and story form, a form close to poetry in compression and clarity, as well as upon the content.
Reviewing Olsen's life in The New York Times Book Review, Margaret Atwood attributed Olsen’s relatively small output to her full life as a wife and mother, a “grueling obstacle course” experienced by many writers. Her book Silences “ begins with an account, first drafted in 1962, of her own long, circumstantially enforced silence,” 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.”
In 1968, Olsen signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Once her books were published, Olsen became a teacher and writer-in-residence at numerous colleges, such as Amherst College, Stanford University, MIT, and Kenyon College. She was the recipient of nine honorary degrees, National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Also 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.
(from Wikipedia)
Though she published little, Olsen was very influential for her treatment of the lives of women and the poor. She drew attention to why women have been less likely to be published authors (and why they receive less attention than male authors when they do publish). Her work received recognition in the years of much feminist political and social activity. It contributed to new possibilities for women writers. Olsen's influence on American feminist fiction has caused some critics to be frustrated at simplistic feminist interpretations of her work. In particular, several critics have pointed to Olsen's Communist past as contributing to her thought. Olsen's fiction awards, and the ongoing attention to her work, is often focused upon her unique use of language and story form, a form close to poetry in compression and clarity, as well as upon the content.
Reviewing Olsen's life in The New York Times Book Review, Margaret Atwood attributed Olsen’s relatively small output to her full life as a wife and mother, a “grueling obstacle course” experienced by many writers. Her book Silences “ begins with an account, first drafted in 1962, of her own long, circumstantially enforced silence,” 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.”
In 1968, Olsen signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Once her books were published, Olsen became a teacher and writer-in-residence at numerous colleges, such as Amherst College, Stanford University, MIT, and Kenyon College. She was the recipient of nine honorary degrees, National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Also 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.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 103 reviews
April 1, 2015
Look, quite simply we all owe these silenced women a great debt and one way to partially repay it is to read this, make a shopping list based on all the authors she mentions, and get reading. Her argument is clear and absolutely correct, and is supported in great detail by quotation and reference. You have an obligation to Unbury those few women who managed to get published, even if their works fell quickly out of print and were forgotten. The Internet makes your life very easy - you can find vanished texts for pennies which can be shipped across the ocean to you for very little. Get hunting and get reading. The shelves of your local bookshop make you lazy. Order things in, track things down. Find the whispering at the root of these deep silences.
May 2, 2018
“The silences I speak of here are unnatural, the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being … when the seed strikes stone; the soil will not sustain; the spring is false; the time is drought or blight or infestation; the frost comes premature.”
Creativity requires time. Time requires money. A significant percentage of potentially creative people are held back because of these facts, which Tillie Olsen explores in this groundbreaking study, first published in 1978.
The necessities of earning a living, and/or of caring for children or family, have prevented working people and women specifically from a creative life. Olsen shares her own story, and then provides a truckload of examples to convince the reader of what we have missed due to this forced silencing of creative people who are too busy to create.
“As for myself, who did not publish a book until I was fifty, who raised children without household help … who worked outside the house on everyday jobs as well … The years when I should have been writing, my hands and being were at other (inescapable) tasks … The habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years—response to others, distractibility, responsibility for daily matters—stay with you, mark you, become you.”
The writers journals and letters she draws from are fascinating—Virginia Woolf, but also Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, Katherine Mansfield, and many more. She also mines the territory for lesser-known writers, and brings back some that should be more widely read. An extensive excerpt from Rebecca Harding Davis is included, and leaves me anxious to read more.
Finally, a quote from Emily Brontё that not surprisingly sums it all up with blistering poetry:
“O! dreadful is the check—intense the agony—
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.”
Creativity requires time. Time requires money. A significant percentage of potentially creative people are held back because of these facts, which Tillie Olsen explores in this groundbreaking study, first published in 1978.
The necessities of earning a living, and/or of caring for children or family, have prevented working people and women specifically from a creative life. Olsen shares her own story, and then provides a truckload of examples to convince the reader of what we have missed due to this forced silencing of creative people who are too busy to create.
“As for myself, who did not publish a book until I was fifty, who raised children without household help … who worked outside the house on everyday jobs as well … The years when I should have been writing, my hands and being were at other (inescapable) tasks … The habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years—response to others, distractibility, responsibility for daily matters—stay with you, mark you, become you.”
The writers journals and letters she draws from are fascinating—Virginia Woolf, but also Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, Katherine Mansfield, and many more. She also mines the territory for lesser-known writers, and brings back some that should be more widely read. An extensive excerpt from Rebecca Harding Davis is included, and leaves me anxious to read more.
Finally, a quote from Emily Brontё that not surprisingly sums it all up with blistering poetry:
“O! dreadful is the check—intense the agony—
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.”
August 2, 2019
We are only beginning to understand the process of discouragings, of silencings; of the making of enabled and of enablers. (from the chapter titled “Wives, Mothers, Enablers”)
Olsen developed this seminal work from a speech she gave in the early 60s on the topic of writers, or would-be writers, silenced by various societal issues. Her focus is on women writers, but she expands the topic to include men writers as illustrious as Thomas Hardy. Following the two essays based on talks she gave, the latter on women writers in “our century,” is an essay on Rebecca Harding Davis, a 19th-century writer who eventually became more known for being the mother of Richard Harding Davis, which in a nutshell illustrates at least one of Olsen’s points.
The second part of the work consists of quotes from writers on the topic of artistic silencing that fit with each subhead. Olsen’s explanatory prose from here on out is fragmented, seeming to fit with the theme of other obligations getting in the way of a writer’s work.
Part three ends with a lengthy passage from Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills related to the topic of submerged art; excerpts from Baudelaire’s My Heart Laid Bare; and reading lists Olsen started in the early 70s of forgotten writers she’s championed, and taught at Amherst. The list includes names we are familiar with now but whose writings were out of print at the time, writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Fuller, and Dorothy West. Olsen was instrumental in getting these and many more writers back in print.
This book was and is a great resource for choosing material for reading and studying, and for using as a jumping-off place for scholars who want to research a particular silenced author. Just don’t use an e-copy, at least not the one I borrowed from Hoopla. It’s horribly formatted. Much of the time it was difficult to figure out if the quotes in part two were by Olsen or by the writer she was quoting. Even worse, it was impossible to access the notes at the end of the chapters while reading the chapter, and then almost impossible to go back and figure out which asterisk(s) went with which line. I read a free copy but if you’re spending money on this, especially if you want it for reference, buy a book made of paper.
Olsen developed this seminal work from a speech she gave in the early 60s on the topic of writers, or would-be writers, silenced by various societal issues. Her focus is on women writers, but she expands the topic to include men writers as illustrious as Thomas Hardy. Following the two essays based on talks she gave, the latter on women writers in “our century,” is an essay on Rebecca Harding Davis, a 19th-century writer who eventually became more known for being the mother of Richard Harding Davis, which in a nutshell illustrates at least one of Olsen’s points.
The second part of the work consists of quotes from writers on the topic of artistic silencing that fit with each subhead. Olsen’s explanatory prose from here on out is fragmented, seeming to fit with the theme of other obligations getting in the way of a writer’s work.
Part three ends with a lengthy passage from Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills related to the topic of submerged art; excerpts from Baudelaire’s My Heart Laid Bare; and reading lists Olsen started in the early 70s of forgotten writers she’s championed, and taught at Amherst. The list includes names we are familiar with now but whose writings were out of print at the time, writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Fuller, and Dorothy West. Olsen was instrumental in getting these and many more writers back in print.
This book was and is a great resource for choosing material for reading and studying, and for using as a jumping-off place for scholars who want to research a particular silenced author. Just don’t use an e-copy, at least not the one I borrowed from Hoopla. It’s horribly formatted. Much of the time it was difficult to figure out if the quotes in part two were by Olsen or by the writer she was quoting. Even worse, it was impossible to access the notes at the end of the chapters while reading the chapter, and then almost impossible to go back and figure out which asterisk(s) went with which line. I read a free copy but if you’re spending money on this, especially if you want it for reference, buy a book made of paper.
June 29, 2022
Dos ensayos breves y esclarecedores que abordan esas preguntas incómodas en la mesa: ¿por qué las mujeres escriben menos? ¿Por qué se publican más hombres que mujeres?
Todavía falta mucho por hacer, leer y escribir, pero creo que entre todas estamos logrando cambiar las preguntas y las respuestas.
Un libro imperdible para quienes nos identificamos en la escritura de las mujeres, la promovemos y la incentivamos.
Todavía falta mucho por hacer, leer y escribir, pero creo que entre todas estamos logrando cambiar las preguntas y las respuestas.
Un libro imperdible para quienes nos identificamos en la escritura de las mujeres, la promovemos y la incentivamos.
May 19, 2012
A slightly disjointed (and seemingly outdated-published in 1978) overview of the "silences" which overtake nearly all writers at one time or another. And yet, not outdated, in the sense that time knows no boundaries when defining the stealing of one's creativity.
Kafka (who worked as an official in a state insurance agency and wrote when he could) stated it many times:
"These two can never be reconciled.... If I have written something one evening, I am afire the next day in the office and can bring nothing to completion. Outwardly I fulfill my office duties satisfactorily, not my inner duties however, and every unfulfilled inner duty becomes a misfortune that never leaves. What strength it will necessarily drain me of."
"When I begin to write after such a long interval, I draw the words as if out of empty air. If I capture one, then I have just this one alone, and all the toil must begin anew."
The toughest (and lengthiest) part of this book was the section on women writers. Nearly all women writers from the 1800's through the 1900's (of note) either never married or married late. Most remained childless. If they did, they had few in number and all had household help, servants or special circumstances in which they had aid in caring for those children.
I guess this is what frustrated me the most. Unlike a woman author who stated "anyone can breed and rear children, no one else can write my books," I've never felt inclined to pass off my mothering duties (and privileges) to someone else.
And yet, how does one deal with that portion of oneself which can only be buried temporarily and yet rears its head-- demanding air in its own lungs?
I suppose there are more adaptable situations and circumstances which can help foster that creativity-- need. But, frankly, I'm left feeling more akin to these ending quotes by Virginia Woolf and Katherine Anne Porter, respectively:
"Always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, while that one gift which it was death to hide (my writing powers), perishing, and with it, myself. A rust eating away the bloom of spring, destroying the tree at its heart."
"I have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can't suppress true talent. People can be destroyed; they can be bent, distorted and completely crippled.... In spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, we are not really masters of our fate. We don't really direct our lives unaided and unobstructed. Our being is subject to all the chances of life."
Kafka (who worked as an official in a state insurance agency and wrote when he could) stated it many times:
"These two can never be reconciled.... If I have written something one evening, I am afire the next day in the office and can bring nothing to completion. Outwardly I fulfill my office duties satisfactorily, not my inner duties however, and every unfulfilled inner duty becomes a misfortune that never leaves. What strength it will necessarily drain me of."
"When I begin to write after such a long interval, I draw the words as if out of empty air. If I capture one, then I have just this one alone, and all the toil must begin anew."
The toughest (and lengthiest) part of this book was the section on women writers. Nearly all women writers from the 1800's through the 1900's (of note) either never married or married late. Most remained childless. If they did, they had few in number and all had household help, servants or special circumstances in which they had aid in caring for those children.
I guess this is what frustrated me the most. Unlike a woman author who stated "anyone can breed and rear children, no one else can write my books," I've never felt inclined to pass off my mothering duties (and privileges) to someone else.
And yet, how does one deal with that portion of oneself which can only be buried temporarily and yet rears its head-- demanding air in its own lungs?
I suppose there are more adaptable situations and circumstances which can help foster that creativity-- need. But, frankly, I'm left feeling more akin to these ending quotes by Virginia Woolf and Katherine Anne Porter, respectively:
"Always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, while that one gift which it was death to hide (my writing powers), perishing, and with it, myself. A rust eating away the bloom of spring, destroying the tree at its heart."
"I have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can't suppress true talent. People can be destroyed; they can be bent, distorted and completely crippled.... In spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, we are not really masters of our fate. We don't really direct our lives unaided and unobstructed. Our being is subject to all the chances of life."
Read
June 27, 2022"Hay tantas cosas que nunca se han escrito y necesitan escribirse... " 💘
March 18, 2014
Tillie Olsen is angry.
Women (and to a lesser extent in her book, also some men) have been silenced. The world does not celebrate, support, or even allow us to acknowledge and hear, their voices.
I have certainly seen the marginalization of women and their lives, concerns, words. And I have argued with young women about the need for affirmative action, which they sometimes see as just a way to punish them for being born white and middle class.
But I also see that many voices are silenced. Most people are not really seen or heard by the powers that be, whoever and whatever they are at this particular time and place. Most people are just part of an anonymous complaining mass, be it "women" or "the unemployed", "the poor" or "minorities", "immigrants" or "veterans", "unions" or "the elderly". They are not individuals but stereotypes, with an often negative mass identity.
Of course Olsen started writing and speaking about women's voices in the 1960's. I do think things are different in a positive way now, if only in the voices available for hearing. (Finding someone to listen is a another story.) Certainly, the internet as a force was not even in anyone's imagination then. And I looked at a few random pages of the books I've read and reviewed on Goodreads and the number of men and women authors, both fictional and non-fictional, is pretty equal. My methods for choosing what to read are pretty random and circumstantial, so I think it's a valid reflection of the opportunities for women's words to be found and read. However, non-western voices are definitely in a minority (and does Murakami even count?)
On the other hand...they told us we could have everything, but we still can't, we have to make choices. We have to. Everyone does. And if a woman's are different from a man's, that doesn't make them any more or less valid or uncertain as to outcome.
So. Olsen's book...
is still opening doors and minds I think. I was especially taken with Rebecca Harding Davis' story and writings, but Olsen ranges widely to give examples of both men and women struggling to find a way to live a full creative life, to make real what is churning inside.
This is a good companion to Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death" which I was reading at the same time.
And this was also a re-reading of a book I read and liked long ago; I imagine I was much more full of anger after the first reading. I think I probably personalized it more then.
It really is difficult to live, and especially difficult to live well. For all of us.
Women (and to a lesser extent in her book, also some men) have been silenced. The world does not celebrate, support, or even allow us to acknowledge and hear, their voices.
I have certainly seen the marginalization of women and their lives, concerns, words. And I have argued with young women about the need for affirmative action, which they sometimes see as just a way to punish them for being born white and middle class.
But I also see that many voices are silenced. Most people are not really seen or heard by the powers that be, whoever and whatever they are at this particular time and place. Most people are just part of an anonymous complaining mass, be it "women" or "the unemployed", "the poor" or "minorities", "immigrants" or "veterans", "unions" or "the elderly". They are not individuals but stereotypes, with an often negative mass identity.
Of course Olsen started writing and speaking about women's voices in the 1960's. I do think things are different in a positive way now, if only in the voices available for hearing. (Finding someone to listen is a another story.) Certainly, the internet as a force was not even in anyone's imagination then. And I looked at a few random pages of the books I've read and reviewed on Goodreads and the number of men and women authors, both fictional and non-fictional, is pretty equal. My methods for choosing what to read are pretty random and circumstantial, so I think it's a valid reflection of the opportunities for women's words to be found and read. However, non-western voices are definitely in a minority (and does Murakami even count?)
On the other hand...they told us we could have everything, but we still can't, we have to make choices. We have to. Everyone does. And if a woman's are different from a man's, that doesn't make them any more or less valid or uncertain as to outcome.
So. Olsen's book...
is still opening doors and minds I think. I was especially taken with Rebecca Harding Davis' story and writings, but Olsen ranges widely to give examples of both men and women struggling to find a way to live a full creative life, to make real what is churning inside.
This is a good companion to Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death" which I was reading at the same time.
And this was also a re-reading of a book I read and liked long ago; I imagine I was much more full of anger after the first reading. I think I probably personalized it more then.
It really is difficult to live, and especially difficult to live well. For all of us.
February 21, 2023
"No alcanzar la propia verdad o no usarla en la escritura, e incluso decirla de modo sesgado, mina la fuerza y la convicción del propio trabajo, limita nuestro potencial y desemboca en una pérdida para la literatura y la comprensión del mundo que esta nos proporciona"
October 18, 2022
No sé si un libro puede ser NECESARIO pero este lo es. Para releer cada dos semanas o así.
January 21, 2023
Para cumplir con los estrictos requisitos de una escritura de mérito, algunos escritores practican una especie de sacerdocio que los deshumaniza; así sucedió en el caso de la soledad autoimpuesta de Rilke que no tiene perro, que no acude a la boda de su hija, que no vive con su familia. Esa actitud, tan distinta de las mujeres que cuidan y escriben después de planchar, deviene en actitud ensimismada, en un modo de contar iluminado, en sublimación de un oficio convertido en don.
No miran en el piso de abajo ni en la habitación de al lado. (...) ¿Es posible la solidaridad del privilegio cultural?, ¿es una usurpación?, ¿es un acto de condescendencia?, ¿es uno de los juegos de máscaras del arte?, ¿ese afán de mirar abajo y a los lados, desde el centro nace de una curiosidad, un afecto, una empatía, una solidaridad, una rabia verdaderas?, ¿existe esa forma de bondad y acompañamiento en ese modo de proceder o nos enfrentamos a un acto inmoral, a un robo, a una intolerable impostura?
*En realidad estos fragmentos son del prólogo maravilloso de Marta Sanz
Apuntes desordenados, o lo que diría a J o A si me preguntasen:
Este libro me ha llevado a pensar mucho en mi relación (o ausencia de) con la escritura. En mi adolescencia escribí como forma de escapismo, para experimentar desde la distancia lo que me gustaría que ocurriese. Tras mi independencia, cuando empecé a participar de la vida, me centré en hacer todo aquello que había fantaseado. No me paré a escribir más que para, puntualmente, atestiguar ciertos hitos. "Ahora me toca, por fin, vivir, ya escribiré".
Más adelante, retomé la lectura y con ella reconocí que en el fondo de mi huida del papel estaba la sensación de no tener nada nuevo que decir. Dado que la literatura que me interesaba, o pensaba digna/ válida, nacía del aislamiento del que derivan el sosiego, la reflexión distanciada, el examen meticuloso y frío; acabé por creer que la vida era incompatible con la escritura. Me prometía retomarla cuando tuviese tiempo de verdad -fuera de la frenética vida diaria-, hubiera vivido lo suficiente para tener respuestas, madurase mis ideas.
Cuando creí obtener unas credenciales vitales suficientes, cada vez que quise ordenar mis ideas estaba demasiado cansada con mis quehaceres y compromisos como para querer afrontar la aprensión inicial. Lo intenté, a traspiés, pero lo que resultaba no se parecía en nada a aquello -reconocido- que estaba acostumbrada a leer y admirar. Supongo que me interesaba más encajar en una experiencia que consideraba universal, que tratar de trazar la mía -y de las mías-; prefería ser acertada para un hipotético espectador futuro, que expresarme. De mí brotaban tantas dudas, tantas contradicciones a cada frase que podía formular, que, creyendo necesaria cierta rotundidad, me rendí.
Abandonada la escritura, me encontré construyendo mis ideas en conversaciones infinitas. En frente de alguien a quien quiero me permito vacilar, preocuparme de lo pequeñito y lo ridículo, expresar las multitudes que caben en una palma. Encuentro la valentía y honestidad que no tengo conmigo misma. Ahora no me interesa la escritura en la soledad de mi habitación, porque nunca soy solo yo. Ya no quiero tratar de escribir de espaldas a las condiciones que me permiten y me impiden hacerlo. No puedo expresar la gratitud que siento por todas aquellas -escritoras y conversadoras- que me han hecho ver que no hay un adentro, que lo cotidiano y desenfadado no tienen que ser excepcionales para merecer decirse, que una puede hacer ruido sin disculparse, que en lo falible es donde nace la hierba.
No miran en el piso de abajo ni en la habitación de al lado. (...) ¿Es posible la solidaridad del privilegio cultural?, ¿es una usurpación?, ¿es un acto de condescendencia?, ¿es uno de los juegos de máscaras del arte?, ¿ese afán de mirar abajo y a los lados, desde el centro nace de una curiosidad, un afecto, una empatía, una solidaridad, una rabia verdaderas?, ¿existe esa forma de bondad y acompañamiento en ese modo de proceder o nos enfrentamos a un acto inmoral, a un robo, a una intolerable impostura?
*En realidad estos fragmentos son del prólogo maravilloso de Marta Sanz
Apuntes desordenados, o lo que diría a J o A si me preguntasen:
Este libro me ha llevado a pensar mucho en mi relación (o ausencia de) con la escritura. En mi adolescencia escribí como forma de escapismo, para experimentar desde la distancia lo que me gustaría que ocurriese. Tras mi independencia, cuando empecé a participar de la vida, me centré en hacer todo aquello que había fantaseado. No me paré a escribir más que para, puntualmente, atestiguar ciertos hitos. "Ahora me toca, por fin, vivir, ya escribiré".
Más adelante, retomé la lectura y con ella reconocí que en el fondo de mi huida del papel estaba la sensación de no tener nada nuevo que decir. Dado que la literatura que me interesaba, o pensaba digna/ válida, nacía del aislamiento del que derivan el sosiego, la reflexión distanciada, el examen meticuloso y frío; acabé por creer que la vida era incompatible con la escritura. Me prometía retomarla cuando tuviese tiempo de verdad -fuera de la frenética vida diaria-, hubiera vivido lo suficiente para tener respuestas, madurase mis ideas.
Cuando creí obtener unas credenciales vitales suficientes, cada vez que quise ordenar mis ideas estaba demasiado cansada con mis quehaceres y compromisos como para querer afrontar la aprensión inicial. Lo intenté, a traspiés, pero lo que resultaba no se parecía en nada a aquello -reconocido- que estaba acostumbrada a leer y admirar. Supongo que me interesaba más encajar en una experiencia que consideraba universal, que tratar de trazar la mía -y de las mías-; prefería ser acertada para un hipotético espectador futuro, que expresarme. De mí brotaban tantas dudas, tantas contradicciones a cada frase que podía formular, que, creyendo necesaria cierta rotundidad, me rendí.
Abandonada la escritura, me encontré construyendo mis ideas en conversaciones infinitas. En frente de alguien a quien quiero me permito vacilar, preocuparme de lo pequeñito y lo ridículo, expresar las multitudes que caben en una palma. Encuentro la valentía y honestidad que no tengo conmigo misma. Ahora no me interesa la escritura en la soledad de mi habitación, porque nunca soy solo yo. Ya no quiero tratar de escribir de espaldas a las condiciones que me permiten y me impiden hacerlo. No puedo expresar la gratitud que siento por todas aquellas -escritoras y conversadoras- que me han hecho ver que no hay un adentro, que lo cotidiano y desenfadado no tienen que ser excepcionales para merecer decirse, que una puede hacer ruido sin disculparse, que en lo falible es donde nace la hierba.
January 3, 2023
"¿Por qué las mujeres silenciadas son muchas más que los hombres? ¿Por qué, cuando las mujeres escriben (una de cada cuatro o cinco obras publicadas), apenas se sabe, enseña o reconoce nada de sus obras?"
Estas han sido dos preguntas que han resonado en mi cabeza desde que me puse las gafas moradas para analizar el contenido literario que leo, recomiendo, analizo y que en algún momento estudié en la universidad. Tillie Olsen retoma estos cuestionamientos a través de dos ensayos que nos hablan de los _silencios_ que impiden que muchas obras salgan a la luz o que el genio creativo de los escritores les permita seguir produciendo obras literas.
Tillie Olsen no sólo se enfoca en los silencios otorgados a las mujeres escritoras, también hace énfasis en la raza, religión, preferencias, etc... Es decir, aquellos grupos vulnerables que históricamente ha sido ignorados.
En el segundo ensayo (que a manera personal es mi favorito) nos habla de un dato muy alarmante: por cada escritora hay doce escritores. Constantemente nos recuerda este dato cuando habla de las trabas que se les han puesto a la mujeres para escribir y publicar.
El papel otorgado socialmente, en el que las mujeres son esposas, madres y cuidadoras, las aleja más del arte de escribir y es ahí donde aquello que tienen que decir queda mudo, en silencio.
Sin duda estoy ante un libro al que seguramente voy a regresar en más de una ocasión. Es de esos libros que se vuelven un acompañante para reafirmar porqué muchas creadoras de contenido nos hemos comprometido en visibilizar el trabajo intelectual de las mujeres a lo largo de la historia.
Estas han sido dos preguntas que han resonado en mi cabeza desde que me puse las gafas moradas para analizar el contenido literario que leo, recomiendo, analizo y que en algún momento estudié en la universidad. Tillie Olsen retoma estos cuestionamientos a través de dos ensayos que nos hablan de los _silencios_ que impiden que muchas obras salgan a la luz o que el genio creativo de los escritores les permita seguir produciendo obras literas.
Tillie Olsen no sólo se enfoca en los silencios otorgados a las mujeres escritoras, también hace énfasis en la raza, religión, preferencias, etc... Es decir, aquellos grupos vulnerables que históricamente ha sido ignorados.
En el segundo ensayo (que a manera personal es mi favorito) nos habla de un dato muy alarmante: por cada escritora hay doce escritores. Constantemente nos recuerda este dato cuando habla de las trabas que se les han puesto a la mujeres para escribir y publicar.
El papel otorgado socialmente, en el que las mujeres son esposas, madres y cuidadoras, las aleja más del arte de escribir y es ahí donde aquello que tienen que decir queda mudo, en silencio.
Sin duda estoy ante un libro al que seguramente voy a regresar en más de una ocasión. Es de esos libros que se vuelven un acompañante para reafirmar porqué muchas creadoras de contenido nos hemos comprometido en visibilizar el trabajo intelectual de las mujeres a lo largo de la historia.
October 26, 2023
Me acabo de enamorar de un libro.
June 21, 2024
No tiene 5 estrellas porque pensé sería un ensayo más reflexivo y filosófico en torno al silencio. Tiene muchas referencias y eso puede ser un poco académico o específico.
January 18, 2024
"Vosotras que enseñáis, leed a escritoras. Hay toda una literatura pendiente de reevaluar y reestimar. Algunas de sus obras se revelarán mortales, como la vida de sus autoras, humanas al fin y al cabo, pues se atendrán únicamente a su época. Otras, hoy en día olvidadas, oscurecidas e ignoradas, revivirán para nosotras.
Leed y escuchad a las escritoras contemporáneas, tanto a las emergentes como a las reconocidas, que a menudo permanecen descuidadas y abandonadas. La ausencia de público es una forma de muerte."
Leed y escuchad a las escritoras contemporáneas, tanto a las emergentes como a las reconocidas, que a menudo permanecen descuidadas y abandonadas. La ausencia de público es una forma de muerte."
June 25, 2022
Es complementa molt bé amb el meu assaig preferit sobre el tema, el de la Russ, aporta nous punts de vista que tot i semblar molt obvis, moltes vegades ens pasen per alt. Llegiu a més dones per favor.
March 17, 2025
He quedado fascinada con este librito que cayó en mis manos sin buscarlo. Qué agudeza la de la autora, qué capacidad de síntesis y análisis sociológico desde la perspectiva de género sobre los motivos de los silencios en la literatura universal de la mitad de la población y la pérdida de talento que conlleva, debido al 'lastre' que cargamos las mujeres: los cuidados vitales de los demás.
Que Virginia Woolf pudiese ser una gran escritora, tiene mucho que ver con que no tuviese hijos y su padre no llegase a ser anciano.
Que Virginia Woolf pudiese ser una gran escritora, tiene mucho que ver con que no tuviese hijos y su padre no llegase a ser anciano.
April 18, 2020
Essential history on the history of gaps in creation by writers, especially women, recognizing that race and money and sexual orientation were issues long before they became widely understood. Discursive and repetitive, sometimes more like notes and lists, but fascinating and instructive, even 50 years later. I read the old edition and wished for the newer one, in case some things had been cleaned up or organized.
May 3, 2023
Wonderful document preserving authors and words that are always at risk of falling into cultural oblivion. Somewhat depressing to read of women’s (and men’s sometimes) lives and dreams thwarted, of the desire to write and the millions of walls it inevitably runs into. Somewhat heartening to read of all the striving in spite of the thwarting, and to read more works from the nineteenth century. Wish there was more attention paid to marginalized communities other than mostly white women, though I know that chronology is full of even more silences so who knows what could be recovered now. Like Popova’s “Figuring,” this book stokes the flame curiosity and moves the reader to think about all the stories and people that are passed over for mainstream, normative narratives.
October 4, 2025
3,5 ⭐️
July 24, 2022
Leer «Silencios» de Tillie Olsen —con un prólogo espectacular de Marta Sanz— ha sido como mirarse a un espejo. Cada una de sus líneas me interpelaba directamente. Por un momento me he sentido Woolf, Melville, Kafka, Rilke, Dickinson, Austen, Hardy. He sentido su desdicha. Dice Kafka en sus diarios: «En la oficina cumplo con mis obligaciones externas, pero no con mis obligaciones internas, y toda obligación interna no cumplida se convierte en una desdicha que ya no se aparta de mí». Por favor, leed «Silencios». Si escribís o lo intentáis, si tratáis de bordear la vida sin caer en la desidia. Si no queréis permanecer en silencio.
February 5, 2011
Really important not to forget Tillie Olsen. I read it as research for my book that will include stuff about women's labor movement in early 20thcentury in US. Makes us remember how hard it is to break out of social definitions of what we should be--how powerful those definitions are and how crippling to the individual human spirit.
January 27, 2018
"Searching for the Self-Loathing Woman Writer" (https://hazlitt.net/longreads/searchi...) led me to this groundbreaking set of essays. Tillie Olsen was too hard for me when I was a young woman--maybe her words are too true, and it hurt too much. The scars of living my own life have given me enough patience to listen. We should all listen.
February 20, 2020
This was a great anthology of essays written about the silences in writing and how women particularly are silenced in their efforts to write. An excellent resource and a wonderful reference book, has a academic tone but the chapters combine different kinds of writers with various persona's. A wonderful resource for any kind of research paper on the topic of women's studies.
February 29, 2008
This book is nonfiction, but reads like a compelling novel. I read it in college and have reread it since. It compeltely opens up new horizons of thought for anyone who concerns themselves with literature and/or gender roles.
July 22, 2010
A bit scatter-shot, but an excellent meditation on the obstacles that can stymie creative work
August 13, 2022
para silencio el que he arrojado yo a mi página de goodreads este último mes. estoy viviendo en un relato de annie ernaux y no me arrepiento de nada. ya volveré.
October 14, 2023
Una maravilla, desde el fantástico prólogo de Marta Sanz, hasta los dos ensayos de Tillie Olsen. Feminismo (con perspectiva de clase) para explicar los silencios y las ausencias de las escritoras y de las clases trabajadoras a quienes se les ha negado el acceso al arte y la cultura y por tanto la capacidad de desarrollarlo, pero que siempre lo tuvieron dentro, igual que las clases altas.
“Hay tantas cosas que nunca se han escrito y necesitan escribirse…”
“Hay tantas cosas que nunca se han escrito y necesitan escribirse…”
July 4, 2020
"Weekends and nights and vacations are all right for reading but not enough for writing. This is a full-time job."
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