I Stand Here Ironing

Have you ever watched a “behind the scenes” of a television show? If you haven’t than I suggest you do. It typically will explain the meaning of the show or what the producer was trying to get the audience to notice. Often times they will interview the producer or writer and ask why they did such a show. Not all, but a lot of times it tends to be from personal experiences or something that the writer/producer has gone through, heard about or witnessed. The best example of this would be the movie about the 9/11 attacks that came out last year. I wanted to take a look into the life of Tillie Olsen and discover what was “behind the scenes” of her short story, “I Stand Here Ironing.”

Tillie Olsen was born on January 14, 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska. She was the second of six children of Samuel and Ida Beber Lerner. Her parents were Russian Jewish Immigrants who had fled from Czarist after the 1905 revolution. They were forced to settle for low-wage jobs and a lower class life in America. Tillie grew up an intelligent girl who never met her potential. She attended Omaha Central High School, a school well-know for their academic rigor.

This was during the Great Depression, which in a sense made her drop out of school to help her parents support the family. Tillie held numerous low-wage jobs throughout this time and throughout her life. At some point she was a waitress, tie presser, meat trimmer, domestic worker, candy maker, hash slinger, jar capper in a food-processing plant, and a packing house worker. Becoming sick of the dead end jobs she began to write at age 19. This is when she started her book, Yonnondio.

Her writing was put to a pause in 1932 when she gave birth to her first child, Karla. Her husband soon left her alone to care for Karla. She later married a man named Jack Olsen. They had three more kids; Julie, Katherine Jo, and Laurie. Tillie devoted the next twenty years of her life to supporting her family and raising her four daughters.

Tillie Olsen did go back to writing when her children grew up. Her first book that was published in 1961, Tell Me a Riddle, contains “I Stand Here Ironing.” This book earned her the 1961 Henry Award for best American short story. She won other awards throughout her writing years including; numerous grants, fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute of Independent Study, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters. Even though Olsen doesn’t have an enormous amount of published works, she is one of the most influential writers