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Yonnondio - a “lament for the aborigines… no picture, poem, or statement, passing them to the future… unlimn’d they disappear.” These words, written originally by poet Walt Whitman to describe Native Americans, give insight in to why Tillie Olsen chose this odd, powerful word to be the title of her semi-autobiographical yet incomplete novel. Her work gives a voice to the new aborigines, the poor, in hopes that they, too, won’t disappear. The subtitle of the book is From the Thirties, yet in the opening page, Olsen notes that it is set in “the early 1920’s”.1 The cause for this discrepancy is due to the fragmented creation of the novel. Tillie Olsen, born in 1912, began writing Yonnondio in the 1930’s, when she was ill and bedridden2. The narrative centers around a family much like her own: poor and constantly moving in hopes of a better life. She based the character Mazie, the overburdened and lonely older daughter, on herself. However, the life Olsen led in the 1930’s informed the work as much as her childhood. While writing, she became pregnant. She was only 19, still very poor, and her child’s father was only around sporadically. Her writing was just as sporadic. While trying to raise children and make a living, she made little progress on the novel, until hard circumstances forced her to stop completely. Only decades later would she piece together her work into a more complete version.3 Olsen’s hard childhood, young (and unplanned) motherhood, and the plight of the depression informed Yonnondio as both a period piece and a reflection on the forgotten poor of American society. Yonnondio centers around the Holbrook family - overwrought Anna and unreliable Jim, with their five children - Mazie, Will, Ben, Jimmie and Bess – and their struggle to survive in a society that can’t offer them any promise of the so-called American dream. Olsen’s political views make the novel a proletariat, unapologetic criticism of capitalism. Her parents were Russian immigrants, socialists who fought for the working class, so as a child her fairytales were revolutionary journals.4 She always identified with the working class, loyal to the voiceless masses when she read books written by the rich and educated, and later, as she herself joined the ranks of the “urbane literary circles” (Coiner, p.
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