Customer Reviews

Yonnondio: From the Thirties

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tillie Olsen's YONNONDIO is such an essential story of poverty and personal struggle. When we look around for stories that help us, this should be high on any list. It's as relevant today as it was in 1936; the poor continue to be used and forgotten, and yet their spirit rises as it does in this clear and compassionate portrait.

First, the woman who claims the father in this book has sexual relations with his child is mistaken. Actually, what takes place is a marital rape that the child hears through the wall. Not pretty, but any feminist activist has to know this kind of tragedy didn't end in the 30s...

That aside, this book is one of the most poignant portrayals of poverty and working class struggle I've ever read. I've taught it to literature students who agreed that the picture Yonnondio paints is not pretty, but the book is mesmerizing just the same. It's absolutely shameful that an amazing book by one of the foremost advocates for women's and working class people's rights is being "silenced" by going out of print.

Tillie Olsen write much like Steinbeck in her prose as she illustrates the struggles of a poor family.

As an activist for 30 years, I initially was drawn to the description of the book, primarily that which dealt with working class and women's struggles. However, as I read the first quarter of the book, it became difficult to read the pages of abuse (hitting, beating) to the children and wife in this story. I was determined to read the rest, based on the seemingly progressive content/review of the book. I stopped in the middle of the book when the father/husband had sexual relations with his (female) child. I have never thrown out a book before, but with this one, I did so with pleasure.