Tillie Olsen writes about people who, because of their class, sex, or race, have been denied the opportunity to express and develop themselves. In a strongly emotional style, she tells of their dreams and failures, of what she has called "the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being but cannot." Writing about working-class families and their members' search for self-fulfillment, Olsen again and again returns to the tension in characters' lives between the demands of living in poverty and the need for accomplishment and meaning. Olsen particularly focuses upon the relationship between mothers and their children, arguing that the greatest demands are placed upon mothers, often to the detriment of the woman's hopes and dreams.

Olsen published relatively little, citing her own life circumstances as the cause. She was forced to delay her writing for some twenty years while working at a number of jobs and...