TILLIE OLSEN'S "I STAND HERE IRONING"
......where the domestic becomes heroic.......
I’m in Vieques again tonight, and the little coquis are serenading me. This afternoon I found a rooster in the laundry room. That was an adventure. It is so beautiful here, and so interesting.
I was going to read to you a story by Tillie Olsen called “I Stand Here Ironing” but I kept crying while I was doing a run-through. Weeping is really a better word for what was happening because weeping is more dignified, more formal, graver. Anyway, I’ve concluded that “I Stand Here Ironing” is simply too intimate for me to read aloud. I think it’s better if you read it to yourself. There’s a link below.
Reading aloud is powerful because it pulls the listener into the story, makes you hear every word, and helps you believe. But I don’t think you’ll have any trouble believing this story or getting pulled in. What’s hard to endure is what it’s about. One critic said Tillie Olsen was the writer who made the domestic profound. That’s an idea worth thinking about. Another way to put it is that she saw women as heroes.
I once heard Olsen’s work described as sentimental, and I was stunned. Sentimental? I don’t think so. Sentimental signifies cheap, unearned emotion, and what is so amazing with Olsen is the depth of feeling that is earned. But maybe you won’t think so. I dunno. Maybe it’s not for you. But for me, it’s so moving I can’t even read it aloud for you tonight, although I do love reading great work.
Olsen did not publish a book until she was in her 40s, and TELL ME A RIDDLE is a slim volume of only four stories. And it’s arguable that only 2 of those stories are entirely successful: “I Stand Here Ironing” and the title story. Yet, in the feminist movement of the second half of the 20th century, Olsen was a major figure. I remember seeing a headline about her, “The Mother of Us All,” and I thought, yes, that’s right, although I had a mother. But Tillie Olsen was the mother of all of us discovering our talents, our gifts, and wondering if we would come to nothing. Maybe so, Olsen seemed to be saying, but that’s all right.
I hope you’ll read “I Stand Here Ironing.” And if you think it’s cheap or sentimental, let me know. Maybe there’s something I’m just not understanding.
https://jerrywbrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/I-Stand-Here-Ironing-by-Tillie-Olsen.pdf
I have quite a story for you about Tillie Olsen, and her beautiful voice. Few years ago, I started working with her daughters to record her stories, which had never been in audio! They said, “We just won’t feel right unless it’s Tillie’s voice, not another actor.” They said she had once recorded “Tell Me a Riddle” for the LIbrary of Congress, but didn’t know more. Well, I worked for Audible, but I said, I’m just going to write the LOC and see if they will help us, with the Estate’s permission. I ended up working with the *best* librarian, who truly understood the significance, and helped me get through all the hoops. FINALLY, I got the digital files.
And guess what.
She was reading away, and smoking, and chatting with the engineer occasionally, it was as great as anyone would remember her, live on stage. Then, right in the middle of a sentence, the tape stopped. Was there more? It was clear she was doing the whole book for posterity. What happened. The librarian said, “This is all there is.”
Just when I was about to give up, I noticed the DATE of the recording. The day she was recording in DC, in the LOC’s basement studio. Timestamped: “November 22, 1963.”
My god. They had been interrupted by the news of JFK’s assassination. Imagine . . .
She never came back to finish it.
To say this work was sentimental is naive; it’s layered, complex and reflective of too many mothers’ experiences raising children in poverty. The guilt alone can paralyze.