Marge Piercy

Last updated

Marge Piercy
Born (1936-03-31) March 31, 1936 (age 88)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Education University of Michigan (BA)
Northwestern University (MA)
OccupationWriter
Spouse
Ira Wood
​
(m. 1982)​
Website margepiercy.com

Marge Piercy (born March 31, 1936) is an American progressive activist, feminist, and writer. Her work includes Woman on the Edge of Time ; He, She and It , which won the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and Gone to Soldiers, a New York Times Best Seller and a sweeping historical novel set during World War II. Piercy's work is rooted in her Jewish heritage, Communist social and political activism, and feminist ideals.

Contents

Life

Family and early life

Marge Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan [1] to Bert (Bunnin) Piercy and Robert Piercy. [2] [3] While her father was non-religious from a Presbyterian background, she was raised Jewish by her mother and her Orthodox Jewish maternal grandmother, who gave Piercy the Hebrew name of Marah. [4]

On her childhood and Jewish identity, Piercy said: "Jews and blacks were always lumped together when I grew up. I didn’t grow up 'white.' Jews weren't white. My first boyfriend was black. I didn't find out I was white until we spent time in Baltimore and I went to a segregated high school. I can't express how weird it was. Then I just figured they didn't know I was Jewish." [5]

An indifferent student in her early childhood, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with the German measles and rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see". [6]

Education

Upon graduation from Mackenzie High School, Piercy became the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan where she received a B.A. degree in 1957. [7] [1] Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France. She earned an M.A. from Northwestern University in 1958.

Adulthood

After graduating college, Piercy and her first husband went to France, then returned to the United States. They divorced when Piercy was 23. [4] Living in Chicago, she supported herself working various part-time jobs while unsuccessfully trying to get her novels published. It was during this time that Piercy realized she wanted to write fiction that focused on politics, feminism, and working-class people. [4] After her second marriage, Piercy became involved in the organization Students for a Democratic Society. In 1968, Piercy's first book of poetry, Breaking Camp, was published, and her first novel was accepted for publication that same year. [8]

Personal life and relationships

At a young age Marge Piercy was married to her first husband, a French Jewish physicist. However, the marriage failed when she was 23; Piercy attributes this to his expectations of gender roles in marriage. [4] In 1962 she married her second husband, Robert Shapiro, a computer scientist. They divorced, and Piercy married her current husband, Ira Wood. [9] She and her husband live in Wellfleet, MA. [10] Piercy designed their home, where the couple have been living since the 1970s. [5]

Politics

Piercy was involved in the civil rights movement, New Left, and Students for a Democratic Society. [4] [11] She is a feminist, environmentalist, Marxist, social, and anti-war activist. [1]

In 1977, Piercy became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP), [12] an American nonprofit publishing organization that works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.

In 2013, Piercy signed an open letter, described as an "open statement from 48 radical feminists from seven countries." The letter may be interpreted to endorse TERF ideology because it defends the right to exclude transgender women from "women-only conferences." Yet, this issue is one that is contested. [13] [14]

Writing

Piercy is the author of more than seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon Is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999). She has published fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her current—and third—husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir. [1] She contributed the pieces "The Grand Coolie Damn" and "Song of the Fucked Duck" to the celebrated anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from The Women's Liberation Movement , edited by Robin Morgan. [15]

Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the United States as He, She and It ) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light was set during the French Revolution. Other novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during modern times. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.

Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. [16] William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk, as Piercy mentions in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass ( He, She and It , 1991) itself postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.

Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone to Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone to Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in the third person after her capture by the Nazis. [17]

Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often centered on feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to social change—what she might call[ original research? ], in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world. It is rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.

Piercy contributed poems to the journal Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Art and Literature. [18] Piercy also contributed to the collection of essays by women leaders in the climate movement, All We Can Save. [19]

Works

Novels

Short stories

Poetry collections

Collected other

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrienne Rich</span> American poet, essayist and feminist (1929–2012)

Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse". Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum", which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Morgan</span> American poet, writer and activist (born 1941)

Robin Morgan is an American poet, writer, activist, journalist, lecturer and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the international feminist movement. Her 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful was cited by the New York Public Library as "One of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century.". She has written more than 20 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and was editor of Ms. magazine.

<i>He, She and It</i> 1991 novel by Marge Piercy

He, She, and It is a 1991 cyberpunk novel by Marge Piercy. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1993. The novel's setting is post-apocalyptic America and follows a romance between a human woman and a cyborg created to protect her community from corporate raiders. The novel also interweaves a secondary narrative of the creation of a golem in 17th century Prague. Like Piercy's earlier novel Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), He, She, and It also examines themes such as gender roles, political economy, and environmentalism. In the mid-twenty-first century, Norika is a toxic wasteland. Dominated by powerful corporations known as "multis," the region includes environmental domes, independent "free towns," and the chaotic "Glop," where most Norikans live in violent, polluted conditions ruled by gangs and warlords.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alicia Ostriker</span> American poet and scholar (born 1937)

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry. She was called "America's most fiercely honest poet" by Progressive. Additionally, she was one of the first women poets in America to write and publish poems discussing the topic of motherhood. In 2015, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018, she was named the New York State Poet Laureate.

<i>Sisterhood Is Powerful</i> 1970 feminist anthology by Robin Morgan

Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement is a 1970 anthology of feminist writings edited by Robin Morgan, a feminist poet and founding member of New York Radical Women. It is one of the first widely available anthologies of second-wave feminism. It is both a consciousness-raising analysis and a call-to-action. Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology (1984) is the follow-up to Sisterhood Is Powerful. After Sisterhood Is Global came its follow-up, Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium (2003).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Allison</span> American writer (born 1949)

Dorothy Allison is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Mary Dorcey is an Irish author and poet, feminist, and LGBT+ activist. Her work is known for centring feminist and queer themes, specifically lesbian love and lesbian eroticism.

<i>Woman on the Edge of Time</i> 1976 novel by Marge Piercy

Woman on the Edge of Time is a 1976 novel by American writer Marge Piercy. It is considered a classic of utopian speculative science fiction as well as a feminist classic. The novel was originally published by Alfred A. Knopf. Piercy draws on several inspirations to write this novel such as utopian studies, technoscience, socialization, and female fantasies. One of Piercy's main inspirations for her utopian novels is Plato's Republic. Piercy describes the novel as, "if only…" Piercy even compares Woman on the Edge of Time and another one of her utopian novels He, She, and It when discussing the themes and inspirations behind it.

Eleanor Perry was an American screenwriter and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alix Kates Shulman</span> American novelist

Alix Kates Shulman is an American writer of fiction, memoirs, and essays, and a prominent early radical activist of second-wave feminism. She is best-known for her bestselling debut adult novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, hailed by the Oxford Companion to Women's Writing as "the first important novel to emerge from the Women's Liberation Movement."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniela Gioseffi</span> American writer

Daniela Gioseffi is an American poet, novelist and performer who won the American Book Award in 1990 for Women on War; International Writings from Antiquity to the Present. She has published 16 books of poetry and prose and won a PEN American Center's Short Fiction prize (1995), and The John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry (2007).

Michelene Dinah Wandor, known from 1963 to at least 1979 as Michelene Victor, is an English playwright, critic, broadcaster, poet, lecturer, and musician.

Elana Dykewomon was an American lesbian activist, author, editor, and teacher. She was a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marilyn Chin</span> American poet

Marilyn Chin (陈美玲) is a prominent Chinese American poet, writer, activist, and feminist, as well as an editor and Professor of English. She is well-represented in major canonical anthologies and textbooks and her work is taught all over the world. Marilyn Chin's work is a frequent subject of academic research and literary criticism. Marilyn Chin has read her poetry at the Library of Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irena Klepfisz</span> Polish-American author, activist (born 1941)

Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish lesbian author, academic and activist.

Michelle T. Clinton is an American poet.

Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne), Dictionary Poems, the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change, Self Storage (Ballantine) and Delta Girls (Ballantine), and her first novel for young readers, My Life with the Lincolns (Holt). She has two books forthcoming in 2017, a collection of poetry, The Selfless Bliss of the Body, and a memoir, The Art of Misdiagnosis

Gwen Benaway is Canadian poet and activist. As of October 2019, She was a PhD candidate in the Women & Gender Studies Institute at the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto. Benaway has also written non-fiction for The Globe and Mail and Maclean's.

<i>Aurora: Beyond Equality</i> 1976 anthology of feminist science fiction

Aurora: Beyond Equality is an anthology of feminist science fiction edited by Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan Janice Anderson and published in 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynn Strongin</span> American poet

Lynn Strongin is an American poet currently residing in Canada who has published more than two dozen books. A pioneering writer on issues of feminism and disability, her poetry and other writings have appeared in a large number of literary magazines and influential anthologies including Sisterhood Is Powerful,No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women, and Rising Tides: 20th Century American Women Poets.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Marge Piercy". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved April 30, 2013.
  2. ↑ Walker, Sue (1991). Ways of knowing : essays on Marge Piercy. Negative Capability. ISBN   0685509648.
  3. ↑ Piercy, Marge (2002). Sleeping with cats . William Morrow. ISBN   0066211158.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "About Marge - Marge Piercy" . Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  5. 1 2 Schwartz, Amy (June 3, 2019). "At Home With Marge Piercy". Moment Magazine. Center for Creative Change. Retrieved June 14, 2019.
  6. ↑ Swaim, Don. "Audio Interview with Marge Piercy". Wired for Books. Ohio University. Archived from the original on August 11, 2011. Retrieved March 21, 2011.
  7. ↑ "Marge Piercy | University of Michigan Detroit Center". Archived from the original on October 14, 2016. Retrieved May 7, 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Marge Piercy | Jewish Women's Archive". jwa.org. Retrieved March 5, 2019.
  9. ↑ Wood, Ira (2012). You're married to her?. Leapfrog Press. ISBN   9781935248255.
  10. ↑ "Marge Piercy". Poets.org. American Academy of Poets . Retrieved April 30, 2013.
  11. ↑ Sales, Kirkpatrick (1973). SDS. Random House. ISBN   0394478894.
  12. ↑ "Associates | The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press". www.wifp.org. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
  13. ↑ "RadFems – Subcultures and Sociology" . Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  14. ↑ "Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Criticism of "Gender"" (PDF). August 12, 2013.
  15. ↑ Sisterhood is powerful : an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement (Book, 1970). [WorldCat.org]. OCLC   96157.
  16. ↑ Michael, Magali (1996). Feminism and the postmodern impulse " post-World War II fiction . State University of New York Press. ISBN   0791430162.
  17. ↑ Marge Piercy, "Gone to Soldiers," Ballantine Books, 1987
  18. ↑ "Under the Skin". Kalliope: a journal of women’s literature and art. 6 (1): 11–13. 1984.
  19. ↑ "Contributors". All We Can Save. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.