Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works

by Tillie Olsen, Laurie Olsen (Foreword), Rebekah Edwards (Introduction)

"An excellent volume that will appeal to anyone interested in women's studies, social justice, journalism, and American short stories and fiction." —Erica Swenson, Library Journal A century after her birth, Tillie Olsen’s writing is as relevant as when it first appeared; indeed, the clarity and passion of her vision and style have, if anything, become even more striking over time. Collected here for the first time are several of Olsen’s nonfiction pieces about the 1930s, early journalism pieces, and short fiction, including the four beautifully crafted, highly celebrated stories originally published as  Tell Me a Riddle : “I Stand Here Ironing,” “Hey Sailor, What Ship?,” “O Yes,” and “Tell Me a Riddle.” Also included, for the first time since it appeared in the 1971 Best American Short Stories, is “Requa I.” In these stories, as in all of her work, Olsen set a new standard for the treatment of women and the poor and for the depiction of their lives and circumstances. In her hands, the hard truths about motherhood and marriage, domestic life, labor, and political conviction found expression in language of such poetic intensity and depth that their influence continues to be felt today. An introduction by Olsen’s granddaughter, the poet Rebekah Edwards, and a foreword by her daughter Laurie Olsen provide a personal and generational context for the author’s work. 

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Read For School, The United States Of America, Book Club, Classics

192 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2013

About the author

Tillie 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)

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading. There is narrative compression, when something is told quickly and vividly. But here I notice temporal compression. In which this couple’s long life together is meted out one jewel-like sentence at a time. Rather astonishing. It’s like Grace Paley without the humor.

In “Tell Me a Riddle” an elderly woman is taunted by a husband who wants to move into a nursing home. His wife though has achieved a hard-won solitude she’s not about to give up. He badgers her relentlessly. Seven children and a selfish husband have turned the woman wretchedly bitter.

The writing is so crystallized that it borders on the aphoristic and ecstatic. Superb writing that transcends utterly its time period, the Great Depression, World War II, the Eisenhower years. Read it, but be prepared to bleed.

[merixien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tillie Olsen ilk defa, “Tavan Arasındaki Deli Kadın”ı okurken radarıma takıldı. Daha sonrasında ise not almama rağmen uzun bir süre geri dönmedim. Ne zaman ki Dorothy Parker’ın yazılarını karıştırırken yeniden karşılaştık, buu sefer es geçmek ya da ertelemek istemedim.

Kitabı okumaya başladığımda, ilk öykü olan “I Stand Here Ironing” ile adeta çarpıldım. Bir monolog şeklinde akan ve ütü yaparken kızının mevcut durumuna dair açıklamaları, doğumundan günümüze doğru getiren bir anne anlatısı. Hatta buna anne söylenmesi demek daha doğru olabilir. Bir annenin gözünden kızıyla olan ilişkisine ve yılların getirdiği birikmişliklere odaklanarak akan bu öyküyü tamamladığınızda aslında sıradan bir kadının kızına dair gözlemleri üzerinden alt gelir grubundan gelen ve annelikten daha öncelikli olarak sistemin çarklarını döndürmek zorunda kalan insanların; işçi sınıfının hayatının zorluklarını da sessizce size yansıttığını hatta sonunda “ne olmuştu?” sorusundan ziyade bu detayların aklınızda kaldığını fark ediyorsunuz. Beni derinden sarsan bu ilk öykünün dahil olduğu ve benim çok daha keyif aldığım “Tell me a Riddle” aslında birbiriyle ziyadesiyle ilişkili dört öyküden oluşuyor. Genel olarak 20. yüzyılın ilk yarısındaki Amerika’da; yoksulluğu, ataerkil düzenin çocukluklarından yetişkinliklerine kadar, kadınlar üzerinde yarattığı baskıcı yaşam şartlarını ve bunların hayatlarında yarattığı kırılmaları, ayrımcılığını, ırkçılığı ve şirketlerin yükselişinde git gide daha da sıkışan işçi sınıfının bunalımını oldukça farklı açılardan ve zaman zaman içinde kaybolmanıza sebep olan şiir gibi akan bir bilinç akışıyla anlatıyor.

Aynı şeyleri kitabın uzun öyküsü daha doğrusu aslında devamı olması gerekirken el yazmaları kaybolduğu için yarım kalan Requa I için söyleyemeyeceğim. Kitapta en zorlandığım ve gerçekten birkaç kez kitabı bırakma noktasına gelmeme sebep olan bir kısımdı bu. Hem yaratılan atmosfer ve karakterlerin hem de konunun bizim için çok uzak ve yabancı olmasından kaynaklı olarak sıklıkla “ben şu anda ne okuyorum ve neden okuyorum bunu” diyerek ve ittire ittire tamamladım o bölümü. Requa I haricindeyse gerek kurgu dışı yazıları gerekse öyküleriyle hayran oldum Tillie Olsen’e. Kendisinin “kurgu” yazarlığına geçişi görece geç yaşlarda olmuş ama onun öncesinde de anlattığı dertlere odaklı bir aktivist olarak Svetlana Aleksiyeviç’in eserleri gibi “belgesel röportaj” üzerine çalışmış. Bu geçmiş deneyim; kurgularını çok uzun cümlelere ve tanımlamalara ihtiyaç duymadan, oldukça sert ve net bir şekilde inşa etmesini sağlayan en önemli detaylardan bence. Eğer bir dönem basılıp tükendiyse ve ben kaçırdıysam özür dilerim ama sanırım Tillie Olsen dilimize hiç çevirilmedi. Bence didaktik bir anlatıya kaymadan, kapitalist düzeni çarkları arasında ezilen hayatları, kadınları ve sıradan görünen insanları bu kadar güçlü ve edebi anlatan bir yazarın bizde yayınlanmaması biraz üzücü geliyor bana. En azından Tell Me a Riddle öykü seçkisi umarım yakın zamanda Türkçe olarak da yayınlanır. Amerika’nın öykücü kadınlarını seven herkese tavsiyedir.

“She kept too much in herself, her life was such she had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She has much to her and probably little will come of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear.
Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom—but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know— help make it so there is cause for her to know—that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.”

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this collection after reading Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” in an anthology and loving it—just a heartbreaking story about a single, working-class mother trying to raise her daughter but being unable to keep her from harm. After reading the rest of the pieces in this volume, I understand why “I Stand Here Ironing” is the one that gets anthologized; I didn’t like any of the other pieces nearly as much.

In her other stories, Olsen utilizes a much more complex style, which is perhaps more literary but less compelling to me: blending stream-of-consciousness with dialogue and jumping between different points of view. Or perhaps I was just less interested in the contents of those stories. “Hey Sailor, What Ship?” and “O Yes” are fine but unremarkable to me: the first about an alcoholic sailor visiting friends back home, the second about a mother worried to see her young daughter’s interracial friendship fading away. The title story, “Tell Me a Riddle,” is the strongest, though depressing: about an elderly woman whose family consistently ignores her wishes, imposing their own needs and desires on her even as she’s dying and failing to recognize her real interests and commitments.

The extra content in this volume I liked even less. “Requa I” I finally gave up on about two-thirds of the way through: the story of a young orphaned boy during the Depression, written in a particularly non-traditional way that I didn’t connect with at all. There are also a handful of short essays about Olsen’s labor rights work in the early 20th century, and while from the biographical material she was clearly a very impressive and progressive lady (fighting for all types of social justice long before it was cool), I was underwhelmed by the actual essays, which are quite bluntly argumentative and lacking in emotional experience and nuance.

Overall, a short work worth trying if you’re interested, but nothing came close to the story that made me pick it up to begin with.

[Tom Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago my then-girlfriend and I went to dinner at what might be described as an elevated Denny’s in Palo Alto. While eating we noticed an ancient elderly couple eating next to us—it was hard not to notice them. Sitting sullenly, alone in their thoughts, they didn’t say much to each other, but every word they did say was lacerating, penetrating. I thought to myself, is this how we all end up?

The stories and essays here aren’t that dissimilar, though slightly less bleak. The atmosphere is the same though. The writing is unrushed, lingering, and dense; thoughts and actions are slowed down to real-time; moving at the pace of life. Each moment weighted down by the accumulation of experience, hurts, and victories of one’s lifetime. Life as a slow-burning fuse full of tension without resolve.

Damn, Tillie Olsen was a great writer.

[Justine · Rating 3 out of 5]

? Stars out of 5 Stars

I'm a little confused as to why this book was not on my "Read", or even my "To Read" shelf ... and I can't remember if I read it at the end of last year or beginning of this year. In fact, I can't even remember if I read the nonfiction half of this.

I do, however, remember wanting to devour her short stories after I read "I Stand Here Ironing" online. After just that one story I was absorbed, I was hooked. There was something so raw and truthful to Tillie's writing, something so modest yet so triumphant. The characters were believable and their depth was endless. From what I do remember, "Tell Me a Riddle" and "I Stand Here Ironing" earn, in my opinion, between 4 and 5 Stars. The other two short stories, "Hey Sailor, What Ship" and "O Yes" were less memorable, though. I felt neutral about the two stories - nothing too memorable, nothing too lovable. In fact, I can recall slight confusion while reading "O Yes", feeling the story may have been disjointed, rushed or just plain old confusing. I kept going back for reference on each character's names and was confused by the actions and attitudes of the girls in the story. I felt like I walked into a room full of people, not knowing anything about who they were, and was expected to recite all their names on the spot and why each one of them was in the room to begin with. Sadly, I'd rate these two stories at a 2 or 3 - perhaps "O Yes" earning a 1/1.5, and "Hey Sailor, What Ship" earning a 2/2.5.

When originally read, I borrowed this book from the library. Because it was still considered a "New Release" at the time, and I took out more than one book, I didn't have long to read it - leading me to believe that I may have not had a chance to read the nonfiction bit. I still don't know for sure, so this is something I will definitely try to pick up again and "finish". In the meantime, my rating stands as follows:

If a rating were to be derived from "Tell me a Riddle" and "I Stand Here Ironing" I may have just given this book 5 Stars. But, because this is a collection and I do have to keep the other stories in mind, I'm settling on a 3 Star rating for this book.

[Kristin Boldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of these pieces are nearly 100 years old and yet so timely, so beautifully, painfully written. Olsen was writing about intersectional challenges of race and poverty and sexism before we even had words for these.

Edited to add in 2023. When I read this last year, I stopped when I got to Requa 1. There was some burning reason I needed to read Tell Me a Riddle so when I finished that story and tried to enter Requa 1, I got bounced right out by its challenges.

This year, as I'm having a run at the <200ers on my shelves, I remembered I hadn't finished this short book. I dove into Requa 1, somehow expecting something fantastical and LeGuin-ish, not realizing that the one was merely a signal that it was to be the first part of 3. 2 was lost, 3 never written. Yet it's the harshest realism set in the 30s California. It's written in provocative and experimental prose that play with POV and stream of consciousness and line breaks and punctuation. Stevie of Requa 1 could very well be the singled-out child in LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. This is followed by a few nonfiction pieces to round out the book.

Once again I wonder: what might the world have received, if Tillie Olsen (and so many others) had gotten support with childcare, as a mother and a parent? The questions she raised in Silences continue to echo, decades later.

[amyleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is everything I want in a book. Depression-era labour struggles. Motherhood. Hunger. Tillie Olsen is the top girl of the crop in my books.

[Magdarine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tillie Olsen is so fucking brilliant.

[Mpho3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I Stand Here Ironing" is probably the short story for which Olsen is most well known, and it is outstanding. Given her dense, complex style, it's also more accessible than some of her other stories. If you're willing to immerse yourself in her stream-of-consciousness rhythms, “O Yes,” “Tell Me a Riddle,” and “Requa I,” are devastating and powerful. Unabashedly feminist and political, these stories tackle working class concerns in a way that is revelatory. I think this particular collection is lesser known than Tell Me a Riddle, but it's worth seeking out for the poem “I Want You Women Up North to Know" and an essay entitled “A Vision of Hope and Fear," which stunned me:

"Sometimes the young--discouraged, overwhelmed--ask me incredulously: 'You mean you still have hope?' And I hear myself saying, yes. I still have hope: beleaguered, starved, battered, based hope. Through horrors, blood, betrayals, apathy, callousness, retreats, defeats--in every decade of my now 82-year-old life that hope has been tested, affirmed. And more than hope: an exhaustless store of certainty, vision, belief--which came to me first in the time of my youthhood, the Depression '30s.

I still live with the ugliness of the decade: the degrading misery, the aloneness, the ravishing hunger, despair: the violence of the clubbings, gassings, jailings, the then shocking killing of swelling numbers of countryfolk. I live, too, with the beauty of the decade: its affirmation of democracy and action; the new right given to assemble, petition, speak out; the use of the right to vote in unprecedented numbers (the first great attempt in the South to break the terror which kept black citizens from that right); the still unseen evidence of human greatness in words, spirit, and deed; the burgeoning solidarity in the nation, bridging differences in color, background, creed, walk of life. Out of that visibility, that sense of identification, came our first body of literature, art, songs, photographs, film concerned with the lives and experiences of most of us.

For the first time, we began to have a sense of our country in all its hues, its wrongs and its rights, its unique diversity and likenesses, its pain, beauty, strengths, possibilities. We were no longer a country of individual helplessness and isolation. Millions in motion, acting together, might not always change their economic circumstances, but they could electrify the consciousness of the nation.

This is Tillie Olsen writing in 1994. Nearly 30 years later, the ugliness and the beauty, o yes. This gives me hope that we may just survive this.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this and other short stories by Tillie Olsen as a young feminist in my twenties, 1970s. It was a revelation then to read stories that put working class women’s lives at the center without romanticization or condescension. Rereading now in my sixties I am struck that it is still rare to write of working class women as worthy subjects rather than sad stereotypes or as exemplary exceptional girls who leave the working class behind in an escape to a “successful” life. Tillie Olsen’s ability to settle into these lives, to be of and with them and to honor their hardships but also their intelligence, complexity and emotional depth with such poetic and profound writing is as rare and startling today as it was sixty years ago. It seems to me perhaps Elena Ferrante carries that lamp today, with a very different writing style.

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend introduced me to "I Stand Here Ironing," and I had to learn more...Olsen's voice is startling and timely, even tho she wrote in the 20th century...a lifetime ago. This collection is Olsen's short fiction, including "Ironing," a reflection of a woman's choices when her daughter was young, choices that probably irrevocably harmed her daughter who now struggles...all while she's standing and ironing, and thinking. "Hey Sailor, What Ship?" gives us a peek into a small family trying to survive, and the uncle whose Navy career was not the success they all hoped. And "Tell Me A Riddle." A novella giving us a view of the last years of a long-married couple...empty-nesters with different visions of their future. HE wants to move to a retirement community where he can hang out with buddies. SHE wants to sit quietly, read, and enjoy her solitude. The clashes and snide communications continue even when she undergoes cancer treatment. And Requa I, an unfinished study of a young boy, newly-orphaned, who is ripped from his life into the family of his stranger-uncle in the deep forest. AND, her nonfiction...called proletarian reportage...kind of a Gonzo Journalism, with Olsen reporting on her involvement in intellectual uprisings of the 30's.

At the center is this author, an unassuming woman who never saw much acclaim in her life. But a breathtaking eye and voice. An author who captures the hopes and fears of people just like us...

I listened to an Audible...with bonus materials...Olsen reading her own story, "Tell me a Riddle." So I read it and cried...twice.

[neha]

not reviewing because this was for a class. i'm taking a class on 20th century literature and my professor chose to structure it around the great depression, hence...this.

prior to this collection, the only work i'd read by tillie olsen was "i stand here ironing", in my ap lit class, in high school. i remember liking it, but i definitely don't remember being this emotionally touched by how raw olsen's writing is. i mean, i guess that's a given, considering the circumstances she was writing in and the state of the country around her.

"a vision of fear and hope" and "the strike" were just so painfully honest. i love the inclusion of work from during and after the depression, specifically NOT in chronological order. the ups and downs, from the despair to the wisdom of hope, created a narrative on the great depression that felt, in the best sense of the word, holistic.

i say that because we got everything. the fear, anger, and confusion of the 20s and 30s, "i am on a battlefield, and the increasing stench and smoke sting the eyes so it is impossible to turn them back into the past", juxtaposed with "[the 1930s were] a time of human flowering, when the country was transformed by the hopes, dreams, actions of numerous, nameless human beings, hungry for more than food". the duality in reaction comes from perspective, from mediation, from introspection as a lens through which the impossible simply became a victory. a victory of survival.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately, Tillie Olsen was not assigned reading for me during my education. Lately, her name keeps coming up as a reference to other works as "writing reminiscent of Tillie Olsen". I decided it was time and requested this book through interlibrary loan. Tillie Olsen is not available in my public library. I read - I Stand Here Ironing - three times in a row just to absorb all the feelings. So much said in one long monologue. By far my favorite in the book and 5+ stars. Unfortunately - Tell Me A Riddle - didn't hold up for me. Very powerful but under today's microscope, it felt more like a study in depression and it's effects on families.

I am a library person, but if I read a book that I know I will want to read again, I buy it. This is on my list of future purchases.

[Mary Kearney · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a human who happens to be a mother, the short story "I Stand here Ironing" contains the plea, the prayer every mother has for her child; which is also one of the most poignant and lovely pieces of writing in literature:

"Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom--but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know--help make it so there is cause for her to know--that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron."

Such a beautiful metaphor for life for all of us or as Goethe said (and I paraphrase): In life one can be the anvil or the hammer.

[Dieuwke · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has happened, a short story that brought tears to my eyes. Not once, twice in this collection I felt so much I had to stop reading and blink.
Tillie Olsen masterly writes about how it is to love, and how it is to no longer love. As I stand here ironing will forever and, ah well, all of them. That said, Racqua I and the non-fiction... no. That’s why there’s 4 stars and not 5. But for the short stories:
Read! Read them!

[Lucas Lysne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful writing of a different time and place, capturing this part of the past with a lovely fidelity. While being realist, at other times, Olsen blurs the line of the Real, which probably has more to do with the truth than 'objective' reportage. This platter of works makes me want to seek out more writing by Olsen.

[Angie]

I picked this up mainly because I wanted to read "I Stand Here Ironing," which is great. Really struggled with some of the other stories, though. Nothing kills a story faster than stream-of-conscious writing or a strange narrative style. They say that good writing makes for easy reading. So it must also be true that bad writing makes for hard reading.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tillie Olsen is such a gifted storyteller- she brings you right into the scene with the characters. Her interesting life experiences are reflected in these stories as well. I especially enjoyed this version on audio through Audible, as the author narrates a final story at the end.

[Lisa Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will read this as if your life depended on it.

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though I appreciated the first story of the collection, I found no pleasure in the rest.

[Suzann · Rating 3 out of 5]

memorable characters, did not finish completely. rec'd by MFA workshop mentor for husband / wife dynamic related to some of my characters.

[Jillian King · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would give the short stories a 3 because I prefer more of a narrative, but I really enjoyed the nonfiction at the end.

[Lea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tillie Olsen sounds like a fascinating person and I found the non-fiction essays really interesting. Sadly, the short stories mostly went over my head and made me feel quite stupid.

[Zary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brb returning my library book and buying a copy of this, I will be rereading it immediately

[Agnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I Stand Here Ironing is in the top 5 short stories of all time.

I enjoyed Tell Me a Riddle, Hey Sailor, What Ship? and all the short non-fiction.

I just could not get Requa I

[Annika · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorites are "I Stand Here Ironing", "Tell Me a Riddle", and "Hey Sailor, What Ship?"

[Linda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book too tedious to read. Every paragraph was tortuous for me to follow and understand.

[Paige · Rating 2 out of 5]

I get it I shouldn't value big stories over real personal stories of what it's like being a single mother trying to make ends meat. But I see that every day and sometimes I want bigger things. Some of the stories were great like "I Stand Here Ironing", some of the stories were way to stream of consciousness for me to pay attention, some of them were just too hard to get through. I didn't like the way this was set up. I really had high hopes since the Ironing story was the first, but I don't know this really just didn't let me form a connection with it.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tillie Olsen gives a voice to working class using poignant, lyrical, gut-wrenching language. Her short stories are part poetry, part stream-of-conscience and will leave you awed. However, my favorite in this collection is the piece entitled A Vision of Fear and Hope written in 1994 but detailing the Depression Era. It is timely, eerily so, and left the deepest impression. The Foreward, Introduction and Biographical Sketch included in this edition added to my pleasure and understanding of a powerful, unique writer of whom I only recently became aware.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be fair I haven't read the poetry in its entirety, but the short story Tell Me A Riddle subdivided in the rest of the stories was heart wrenching at moments, and I really need to give this the attention it deserves.