The Great Depression (1913-1928) was a dark period of the American History and had a devastating effect on many people, especially on the uneducated and underpaid working poor. In Yonnondio: From the Thirties, Olsen narratives vividly the live of the working poor, women and minorities and their struggle to survive during the Depression. Along with the historical events gentility touched in the book, the author masterfully presents her personal opinion in regards to the class discrimination.
Tillie Olsen (1912-2007) was a daughter of Jewish immigrants, who fled to the United States after participating in the abortive 1905 Russian revolution. She was a bright, though and wild child and was deeply influenced by her parent’s socialist values. At age of seventeen Olsen joined the Young Communist League and became crusading for the Communist Party in the Midwest. That was the time when she clearly saw everywhere the brutal reality of…show more content… In her book Yonnondio: From the Thirties, her examination of the class is focused on one family only The Holbrooks from Wyoming. Their journey from the Wyoming mines to the farm in South Dakota to the slaughterhouse in Omaha presents one disaster after another and open reader’s eyes over the class’ struggle and aspiration during the time of Great Depression. People’s nature is to pursue a better life, and even better future for their children no matter of the difficulties. When Holbrooks decide to move to a better place, so their children to have a safer life, they enforce unspeakable methods to pursue a better life in the spring “But now fatback and cornmeal to eat. Newspapers stuffed in the shoes so that new ones need not be bought, and the washing done without soup…The old quil will make coats for Mazie and Ben” (Olsen, pg.23) An optimistic reader is inspired and even for a second
