Tille Olsen’s Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and other stories

Our September 9, 2024 Book Group discussed Tillie Olsen’s Tell Me A Riddle, a collection of four short stories first published in a slim book in 1927. All four stories were featured in Best American Short Stories, in the year each was first published in a literary magazine. The title story was awarded the O. Henry Award in 1961 for best American short story. The group had read Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing,” before, and were excited that a member suggested this collection as a chance to read more of her work.

Let me digress a bit here to describe how the book list selection process has evolved. I chose the selections initially, drawing on stories assembled in my Book of Old Ladies that had been favorites in my courses at Mills College. We maintained the theme, focusing on “women of a certain age” as the main characters. 

Eventually the entire group participated  in proposing books, pitching them and then taking a vote. We considered broadening the theme, and read several books by men, opening the genre to include essay collections by Ursula LeGuin and Ann Patchett, and then returned to our initial theme of old women but maintained the inclusion of essays and memoirs. 

We now limit recommendations to two per member and then vote, trying to select one from each pairing. Sometimes several members agree on a single book, and reduce the list prior to a final vote. Then I create the order of books, taking into consideration length and topic. We read or listen to the longest books over the lengthy break between series. 

We have also changed our discussion format. Initially I assembled a list of open-ended questions and led discussion. Later, various members took turns creating the questions and leading the discussions. Now we each show up with an observation or a question, usually sharing a few sentences from the text that either delighted or confused us.

Back to Tell Me a Riddle. In advance of the discussion, I wrote a bit about my responses to the stories, and my connections to and responses to Tillie Olsen. Tille Olsen’s writing introduced me to many writers of what we began to call Working Class Literature;  the Feminist Press began to publish some of the then out of print works she brought to light. When I was a student in UC Berkeley’s graduate program.  I invited her to a graduate course on California Women Writers, where her work was not included.  Later, I  invited her to read aloud “I Stand Here Ironing” at Mills. Olsen reminded me a little of my mother, also an Olsen, also a working class woman, a maid, raised to be a wife and mother, writing poetry on the backs of envelopes and grocery receipts. In Silences, Olsen accounts for the years between her literary outputs: “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.” Both Tillie Olsen’s life and my mother’s contrasted starkly with university culture, and after meeting Tillie Olsen I wanted my Mills students, especially those first generation students like me, to be encouraged to write their untold stories. 

In our group, everyone had much to offer about their own connections to Olsen’s work. A librarian in the group considered the implications of  the subject headings under which the collection is listed  in library’s catalogs. Another member who was familiar with the names Jack and Tillie Olsen from her family’s connections with the Longshoremen Union  told us about the housing cooperative Tillie Olsen and her husband helped establish in the Western Addition. Our discussion included close analysis of the prose and general discussions of class and race, of mothers and daughters, of the “sorting” that occurs among children as they move into middle school. We all learned something beyond our own initial reading, and it was one of the richest discussions we have had.

Several people read the most recently published version from the University of Nebraska  Press that includes not only the 4 stories but also a longer piece of writing, Requa, perhaps her most experimental work, some of her political articles, and several wonderful critical essays by family members, daughters Laurie Olsen and Julie Olsen Edwards and a stellar introduction by her granddaughter, Dr. Rebekah Edwards, a long time visiting professor at Mills as well as an alum and a dear friend of my daughter, Kirsten. I highly recommend reading Tillie Olsen’s work, and if you can, reading this edition.