Tillie Olsen

"Yonnondio follows the heartbreaking path of the Holbrook family in the late 1920s and the Great Depression as they move from the coal mines of Wyoming to a tenant farm in Western Nebraska, ending up finally on the killing floors of the slaughterhouses and in the wretched neighborhoods of the poor in Omaha, Nebraska. Mazie, the oldest daughter in the growing family of Jim and Anna Holbrook, tells the story of the family's desire for a better life--Anna's dream that her children be educated and Jim's wish for a life lived out in the open, away from the darkness and danger of the mines. At every turn in their journey, however, their dreams are frustrated, and the family is jeopardized by cruel and indifferent systems."--Publisher's description on back cover.

Contents: Survivors / Elsie Singmaster -- Lost Phoebe / Theodore Dreiser -- Golden honeymoon / Ring W. Lardner -- I'm a fool / Sherwood Anderson -- My old man / Ernest Hemingway -- Telephone call / Dorothy Parker -- Double birthday / Willa Cather -- Faithful wife / Morley Callaghan -- Little wife / William March -- Babylon revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald-- How beautiful with shoes / Wilbur Daniel Steele -- Resurrection of a life / William Saroyan -- Only the dead know Brooklyn / Thomas Wolfe -- Life in the day of a writer / Tess Slesinger -- Iron City / Lovell Thompson -- Christ in concrete / Pietro Di Donato -- Chrysanthemums / John Steinbeck -- Bright and morning star / Richard Wright -- Hand upon the waters / William Faulkner -- Net / Robert M. Coates -- Nothing ever breaks except the heart / Kay Boyle -- Search through the streets of the city / Irwin Shaw -- Who lived and died believing / Nancy Hale -- Peach stone / Paul Horgan -- Dawn of remembered spring / Jesse Stuart -- Catbird seat / James Thurber -- Of this time, of that place / Lionel Trilling -- Wind and the snow of winter / Walter Van Tilburg Clark -- Enormous radio / John Cheever -- Children are bored on Sunday / Jean Stafford -- NRACP / George P. Elliott -- In Greenwich there are many gravelled walks / Hortense Calisher -- Other foot / Ray Bradbury -- Three players of a summer game / Tennessee Williams -- Mother's tale / James Agee -- Magic barrel / Bernard Malamud -- Circle in the fire / Flannery O'Connor -- First flower / Augusta Wallace Lyons -- Contest for Aaron Gold / Philip Roth -- One ordinary day, with peanuts / Shirley Jackson -- To the wilderness I wander / Frank Butler -- Ledge / Lawrence Sargent Hall -- This morning, this evening, so soon / James Baldwin -- Tell me a riddle / Tillie Olsen -- Old army game / George Garrett -- Pigeon feathers / John Updike -- Sound of a drunken drummer / H.W. Blattner -- Keyhole eye / John Stewart Carter -- Long day's dying / William Eastlake -- Upon the sweeping flood / Joyce Carol Oates.

This definitive edition reprints the text of Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron-Mills together with a broad selection of historical and cultural documents that open up the novella to the consideration of a range social and cultural issues vital to Davis's nineteenth century. Special attention is given to nineteenth-century American discussions of work and social class, moral and social reform, the development of American art and industry, and the position of the woman writer.

A collection of works, both fictional and non-fictional, gathered together here for the first time --

FLANNERY O'CONNOR, The Comforts of Home 3 ANN BEATTIE, It's Just Another Day in Big Bear City, California 22 MARK TWAIN, The $30,000 Bequest 37 EUDORA WELTY, Why I Live at the P.O. 62 WILLIAM GOYEN, Tapioca Surprise 73 STEPHEN CRANE, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky 83 WILLIAM FAULKNER, [Barn Burning]( CONRAD AIKEN, Strange Moonlight 113 ELIZABETH SPENCER, Moon Rocket 124 TRUMAN CAPOTE, Children on Their Birthdays 133 JOHN UPDIKE, A & P 148 ALICE MUNRO, Miles City, Montana 155 LEE K. ABBOTT, The End of Grief 175 ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Day's Wait 187 ELLEN WILBUR, Wind and Birds and Human Voices JOYCE CAROL OATES, Theft 214 BHARATI MUKHERJEE, The Tenant 255 AMY TAN, Rules of the Game 268 LOUISE ERDRICH, Love Medicine 279 CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN, The Yellow Wallpaper 301 TONI CADE BAMBARA, Maggie of the Green Bottles 316 ANTON CHEKHOV, The Darling 323 D. H. LAWRENCE, The Lovely Lady 334 HENRY JAMES, Paste 350 WILLA CATHER, The Way of the World 364 VIRGINIA WOOLF, Lappin and Lapinova 377 ZORA NEALE HURSTON, The Gilded Six-Bits 385 JAMES JOYCE, The Dead 395 DORIS LESSING, To Room Nineteen 431 TILLIE OLSEN, I Stand Here Ironing 460 RAYMOND CARVER, Boxes 467 GLORIA NAYLOR, The Two 481 SHIRLEY JACKSON, Flower Garden, 489 REGINALD McKNlGHT, The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas 511 HELENA MARIA VIRAMONTES, The Cariboo cafe 522 JOHN EDGAR WIDE-MAN, Fever 535 ANNA LEE WALTERS, The Warriors 558 GEORGE GARRETT, An Evening Performance 573 CHARLES JOHNSON, China 581 ESTELA PORTILLO TRAMBLEY, Pay the Criers 598 EDGAR ALLAN POE, [Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar]( KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, The Grave 623 ALLEN BARNETT, The Times As It Knows Us 629 BERNARD MALAMUD, Angel Levine 675 EDITH WHARTON, Afterward 685 SARAH ORNE JEWETT, The Landscape Chamber 711 FRANZ KAFKA, A Report to an Academy 725 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, Drowne's Wooden Image 733 HERMAN MELVILLE, [Bartleby, the Scrivener]( JOHN CHEEVER, Torch Song 775

Life in the iron mills / Rebecca Harding Davis -- [The awakening]( / Kate Chopin -- Melanctha / Gertrude Stein -- Summer / Edith Wharton -- Quicksand / Nella Larsen -- Pale horse, pale rider / Katherine Anne Porter -- Tell me a riddle / Tillie Olsen -- Miss Muriel / Ann Petry -- Merle / Paule Marsha ll.