Silences
Published in 1978, Silences is Tillie Olsen's groundbreaking book about the writers who never wrote, or who wrote too little, because of class, race, gender, and the unending work of survival. Drawing on her own decades of interrupted writing as a working class mother, Olsen weaves together her own reflections, quotations from canonical and forgotten writers, and case studies of figures such as Herman Melville, Thomas Hardy, and Rebecca Harding Davis. She catalogues the structural conditions that produce silence: domestic labor, racism, lack of education, censorship, and self doubt. The book has been credited with helping to reshape feminist literary criticism, prompting a generation of scholars to recover lost women's writing and to ask whose voices the canon has excluded. Part essay, part anthology, part manifesto, Silences remains a touchstone for anyone thinking about creativity, labor, and the conditions that make art possible.
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What you might want to know about Silences
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Tillie Olsen's classic 1978 study of how class, race, and gender silence writers who never get to write.
Both. Olsen blends personal reflection with literary criticism and excerpts from other writers.
Yes, it remains widely taught in feminist studies and creative writing programs and influenced later books on women and creativity.
Silences was written by Tillie Olsen, published in 1978 by Random House, Inc..
Silences is 320 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Silences takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Silences is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.