kjboldon's review against another edition
4.0
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.
bobbo49's review against another edition
5.0
Although I didn't find the parts of the book focused on the writer Rebecca Harding Davis as captivating as the rest, I had to give Silences five stars because overall it is so remarkable, even nearly a half century later. The book is a reflection and analysis and commentary by Olsen on the overwhelming social and economic challenges and obstacles to writers - and particularly female writers - that produce the "silences" that so many (even the greatest male) writers suffer. Her observations are so deep and powerful that I literally gasped at some of them; much of the book is filled with quotations from history's best authors reflecting their own struggles and periods of silence. I think that every teacher of literature, every (even aspiring) writer, and every reader interested in the challenges of writing , should read this book.
jenna0010's review against another edition
5.0
Oh gosh. Tillie Olsen is so sharp and lovely even when she writes about labour that takes women away from the writing desk. Unnatural silences. The threads she strings throughout build into such a beautiful conclusion yet at once feel as though they might all come undone.
sg94's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
3.5
This is a great teaching resource but it's hardly a book "for reading", meaning, it is one speech (or lecture), a bunch of quotes and snippets, and then a conclusion. It's a good jumping off point, if this is a topic you'd like to research, but if you already know where you want to go with your research, it's unnecessary. The lecture at the start is interesting, though, if for nothing else than to help frame the way the topic might be taught.
kathyxtran's review against another edition
3.0
Would be more for first essays/lectures, but the rest of this collection is mostly whole excerpts and notes that I ended up skimming. Would probably be great to have as a reference copy on the shelf though.
octavia_cade's review against another edition
5.0
A collection of essays and criticism on the theme of authorial exclusion - how being kept from a full immersion in craft has materially disadvantaged certain sets of writers. This is manifested in what Olsen calls silences: those long periods in an author's life where nothing is written or published because other aspects of life take priority. There's a strong focus on how poverty keeps artists from their craft, and how impoverished creators are by necessity forced to concern themselves more with earning a living than with getting on with the business of creation. The biggest example Olsen uses to support this is a novella I'd never heard of before: Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis, which tells the story of an iron-labourer and sculptor who comes to a terrible end, his potentially genius art nearly all gone and himself driven to suicide by deprivation and injustice. (The excerpts included are excellent, I'm going to have to find a copy.)
Naturally poverty is affected by a number of other factors - intersections with race and gender, for example - and the bulk of the silences that Olsen is concerned with are those of women, who have historically been so burdened by the care of others that they've been unable to be artists in the same uninterrupted manner that their husbands enjoyed. Olsen backs up her argument with a mountain of quotations and excerpts from primary sources, conveying both through these women and her own first-hand experience the despair of women writers who've been forced into the silences that so undermine their work. It's painful and fascinating reading.
Naturally poverty is affected by a number of other factors - intersections with race and gender, for example - and the bulk of the silences that Olsen is concerned with are those of women, who have historically been so burdened by the care of others that they've been unable to be artists in the same uninterrupted manner that their husbands enjoyed. Olsen backs up her argument with a mountain of quotations and excerpts from primary sources, conveying both through these women and her own first-hand experience the despair of women writers who've been forced into the silences that so undermine their work. It's painful and fascinating reading.
raehink's review
5.0
Olsen presents a marvelous series of essays, lectures and anecdotes about writing, creation, and the writing career, with the focus on women. Can a woman be a mother and write?
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