SOURCE: "The Passion of Tillie Olsen," in The Nation, Vol. 715, No. 15, April 10, 1972, pp. 472-74.

In the following review of Tell Me a Riddle, Fisher praises Olsen's efforts as a feminist writer.

You won't find her in Who's Who … nor is her name going to be listed in the forthcoming reference book, World Authors. Her total published work probably runs to under 200 pages: the first story came out in 1934, the latest in 1970. In between there were the four stories in Tell Me a Riddle, reissued in paperback this August after being out of print for several years, stories written and published between 1953 and 1960, and—its own kind of explanation—the essay, "Silences, When Writers Don't Write," published in Harper's magazine in 1965. "I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having let writing die over and over...