Lament for the Poor: Yonnondio

Yonnondio - a “lament for the aborigines… no picture, poem, or statement, passing them to the future… unlimn’d they disappear.” These words, written originally by poet Walt Whitman to describe Native Americans, give insight in to why Tillie Olsen chose this odd, powerful word to be the title of her semi-autobiographical yet incomplete novel. Her work gives a voice to the new aborigines, the poor, in hopes that they, too, won’t disappear.
The subtitle of the book is From the Thirties, yet in the opening page, Olsen notes that it is set in “the early 1920’s”.1 The cause for this discrepancy is due to the fragmented creation of the novel. Tillie Olsen, born in 1912, began writing Yonnondio in the 1930’s, when she was ill and bedridden2. The narrative centers around a family much like her own: poor and constantly moving in hopes of a better life. She based the character Mazie, the overburdened and lonely older daughter, on herself. However, the life Olsen led in t...