Tell Me a Riddle

by Olsen, Tillie; Rosenfelt, Deborah Silverton

• ISBN13: 9780813521367
• ISBN10: 081352136X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-06-01
• Publisher: Rutgers Univ Pr

Summary

This collection of four stories, "I Stand Here Ironing," "Hey Sailor, what Ship?," "O Yes," and "Tell me a Riddle," had become an American classic.  Since the title novella won the O. Henry Award in 1961, the stories have been anthologized over a hundred times, made into three films, translated into thirteen languages, and - most important - once read, they abide in the hearts of their readers.

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(27)
Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt
Chronology	27	(6)
Tell Me a Riddle	33	(272)
Tillie Olsen
Background to the Story
Silences in Literature	87	(18)
Tillie Olsen
Personal Statement	105	(8)
Tillie Olsen
Critical Essays
The Circumstances of Silence: Literary Representation and Tillie Olsen's Omaha Past	113	(20)
Linda Ray Pratt
From the Thirties: Tillie Olsen and the Radical Tradition	133	(44)
Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt
A Feminist Spiritual Vision	177	(22)
Elaine Neil Orr
Death Labors	199	(14)
Joanne Trautmann Banks
Motherhood as Source and Silencer of Creativity	213	(30)
Mara Faulkner
To ``Bear My Mother's Name'': Kunstlerromane by Women Writers	243	(28)
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
``No One's Private Ground'': A Bakhtinian Reading of Tillie Olsen's Tell Me a Riddle	271	(34)
Constance Coiner
Selected Bibliography	305	(4)
Permissions	309