the writing and resistance of Tillie Olsen and Meridel Le Sueur /
First Statement of Responsibility
Constance Coiner.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
New York :
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Oxford University Press,
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
1995.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
1 online resource (xii, 282 pages) :
Other Physical Details
illustrations
INTERNAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES/INDEXES NOTE
Text of Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Better Red is an interdisciplinary study addressing the complicated intersection of American feminism and the political left as refracted in Tillie Olsen's and Meridel Le Sueur's lives and literary texts. The first book-length study to explore these feminist writers' ties to the American Communist Party, it contributes to a reenvisioning of 1930s U.S. Communism as well as to efforts to promote working-class writing as a legitimate category of literary analysis. At once loyal members of the male-dominated Communist party and emerging feminists, Olsen and Le Sueur exhibit in their writing tendencies both toward and away from Party tenets and attitudes-at points subverting formalist as well as orthodox Marxist literary categories. By producing working-class discourse, Olsen and Le Sueur challenge the bourgeois assumptions-often masked as classless and universal-of much canonical literature; and by creating working-class women's writing, they problematize the patriarchal nature of the Left and the masculinist assumptions of much proletarian literature, anticipating the concerns of "second wave" feminists a generation later.
OTHER EDITION IN ANOTHER MEDIUM
Title
Better red.
PERSONAL NAME USED AS SUBJECT
Le Sueur, Meridel-- Political and social views.
Olsen, Tillie-- Political and social views.
Le Sueur, Meridel.
Olsen, Tillie.
TOPICAL NAME USED AS SUBJECT
Communism and literature-- United States-- History-- 20th century.
Feminism and literature-- United States-- History-- 20th century.
Women and literature-- United States-- History-- 20th century.
Women authors, American-- 20th century, Biography.
Women communists-- United States, Biography.
Working class writings, American-- Women authors-- History and criticism.