Tillie Olsen

( January 14, 1912 - January 1, 2007)

 For College Moms, Tillie Olsen is our spiritual guide, our inspiration, our role model for how to have a meaningful life, a life of fighting for labor rights in the1930's (see "Strike" about Bloody Thursday, July 5, 1934, the massacre of San Francisco dock workers by the San Francisco Police), a life of fighting for the time to write while raising four children (see Silences, 1978), a life fighting for the rights of mothers (see Tell Me a Riddle, first published in 1955), a life fighting for the rights of others to have a voice (she was one of the founders of the Feminist Press), a life of encouraging and mentoring new feminist writers, including this one.

Meeting Tillie Olsen was the most important event in my life. I was so overcome I burst into tears at the honor of meeting this great writer of the most important piece of literature of writing about mothers, "I Stand Here Ironing." When I calmed down, she told me this story:

"I had been working in housekeeping at a hotel and so I cleaned the newspapers and magazines out of the rooms. I had seen an ad in one of the newspapers about a contest for short stories. I have a short story, I thought, and so I tore out the ad. I sent in the story and forgot about it.

Months later I recieved a call: "Hello, this is Wallace Stegner, and I am happy to report that you have won the Creative Writing Scholarship. We'll be looking forward to seeing you here at the Stanford Graduate Program in Creative Writing in the Fall," he said.

"Is it okay that I didn't finish the 10th grade," I said."--Tillie Olsen

And so Tillie Olsen , a mother of four girls, at 42, became a College Mom. She published her first book at 50. For more information, go to

http://www.tillieolsen.net

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------------------Katherine Arnoldi

1951: Received the Yale Younger Poets Award. Published her first book, A Change of World 
Received a Guggenheim Award

Diving into the Wreck : National Book Award 1974 She refused to accept this award as an individual but accepted it with two other women on behalf of all women writers.

1976: Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution This book defines Motherhood as a patriarchal institution in which women are constantly surveilled by experts, monitored by men's expectations and Mothering as the nurturing and care of children based on women's own experiences.

1997: Adrienne Rich refused the National Medal of Arts Award in 1997 saying the "the very meaning of art is incompatible with the politics of this administration (Clinton had just signed the Workfare Bill, ending. as his campaign slogan promised "welfare as we know it."

"Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage."-----Adrienne Rich