I recently read Tillie Olsen's 1960 novella "Tell Me a Riddle".

An aging Jewish woman with cancer, her sense of having lost her self through years of tending to others, endless arguments between spouses, poverty, death...it all sounds so bleak, doesn't it?

Yet such is Olsen's sensitivity to the sound of speech, the complex intertwining of resentment and attachment, memories of migration and hope, and sheer emotional honesty that I put down the book feeling revitalised.

Don't approach the book as "just" a piece of women's literature, working class writing, or Jewish literature; it's all of those, and (not "but") from these skeins Olsen weaves a tale for us all.

#USLiterature #AmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #FeministLiterature #WorkingClassLiterature #TwentiethCenturyLiterature #JewishLiterature #Novella #TillieOlsen #TellMeARiddle

Working Class Literature on T-Bone Slim

The first episode of Working Class Literature, a sister podcast to Working Class History, features the life and work of T-Bone Slim. Like so many figures of our history, his important contributions are largely forgotten, but it was eye-opening and inspiring to encounter his writings for the first time.

https://apollolemmon.com/2019/10/16/working-class-literature-on-t-bone-slim/

#IWW #poetry #T-BoneSlim #unions #WorkingClassLiterature