"What Tillie Olsen has to say . . . is of primary importance to those who want to understand how art is generated or subverted and to those trying to create it themselves." -
New York Times Book Review "Tillie Olsen helps those of us condemned to silence-the poor, the racial minorities, the women-find our voices." -
Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior "[
Silences is] 'the Bible.' I constantly return to it." -
Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street "As much as I learned from
Tell Me a Riddle, I learned even more from Tillie's landmark classic and original essay
Silences: When Writers Don't Write, which I read while living in Cambridge in the early '70's, raising a small daughter alone and struggling to write myself." -
Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple "
Silences helped me to keep my sanity many a day." -
Gloria Naylor, author of Mama Day "
Silences will, like
A Room of One's Own, be quoted where there is talk of the circumstances in which literature is possible." -
Adrienne Rich, author of Diving into the Wreck
