Daily Archives for: September 7th, 2017

Silences by Tillie Olsen: On Being a Writer and a Mother

By | On September 7, 2017 | Updated December 6, 2022 | Comments (0)

In Silences (1978), Tillie Olsen examined letters and journals of women authors of the past to comment on how personal circumstances affected their creative lives.

Best remembered for this book as well as the classic short story Tell Me a Riddle, Olsen reflected on other writers’ experiences as well as the impact of motherhood on her own of writing. She looked at how marriage and parenting impacted literary output and opportunities for success. Issues of gender and class are central to these meditations.

Fast forward to the present, when many more women writers are successfully combining being a writer and being a mother. It’s still not easy, and women are the ones who have to think about it and make such choices. Read More→

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Contemplative Quotes by Eudora Welty

By | On September 7, 2017 | Updated December 6, 2022 | Comments (8)

Eudora Welty‘s writing reflected realism in human relationships. Known as a Southern writer, a sense of place was often an important theme in her novels and short stories. Wisdom, wit, and experience come through in these contemplative quotes by Eudora Welty.

Welty spent much of her life in the Mississippi Delta and the community out of which her most iconic writings grew. Her early novel, Delta Wedding (1946), looks at the world of adult interactions and love through the eyes of a child.

What stands out in Welty’s novels, stories, and memoirs is her ability to capture the texture of community and a sense of place. Her work explores both separateness of the individual and the healing potential of love. She also captured the writer’s life in the nonfiction works One Writer’s Beginnings (1984) and On Writing (2002). 

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