Writing may be hard work, but it isn’t the kind that pays the bills. Tillie Olsen’s seminal Silences wonders just what kind of work writing really is, and who has the privilege to do it:
Though access to education has improved for women and for members of the working class (categories that intersect) the lessons of “Silences” still resonate. Women still perform more housework; colleges still favor the economically privileged. We may wonder about the literature that could be made by “silenced people,” who, in Olsen’s words, are “consumed in the hard everyday essential work of maintaining human life.”
