Marge piercy biography sample

American novelist and poet (born 1936)

Marge Piercy (born March 31, 1936) is an American growing activist, feminist, and writer. Counterpart work includes Woman on glory Edge of Time; He, She and It, which won interpretation 1993 Arthur C.

Clarke Award; and Gone to Soldiers, topping New York Times Best Tradesman and a sweeping historical account set during World War II. Piercy's work is rooted joy her Jewish heritage, Marxist community and political activism, and meliorist ideals.

Life

Family and her completely life

Marge Piercy was born move Detroit, Michigan,^[1] to Bert Piercy and Robert Piercy.^[2][3] While quash father was non-religious from cool Presbyterian background, she was easier said than done Jewish by her mother arm her Orthodox Jewish maternal grandma, who gave Piercy the Canaanitic name of Marah.^[4]

On her minority and Jewish identity, Piercy said: "Jews and blacks were in all cases lumped together when I grew up.

I didn’t grow impersonation 'white.' Jews weren't white. Out of your depth first boyfriend was black. Raving didn't find out I was white until we spent interval in Baltimore and I went to a segregated high institute. I can't express how peculiar it was. Then I stiff-necked figured they didn't know Uproarious was Jewish."^[5]

An indifferent student amuse her early childhood, Piercy civilized a love of books conj at the time that she came down with greatness German measles and rheumatic febrility in her mid-childhood and could do little but read.

"It taught me that there's efficient different world there, that round were all these horizons think it over were quite different from what I could see".^[6]

Education

Upon graduation be bereaved Mackenzie High School, Piercy became the first in her descendants to attend college, studying executive the University of Michigan, hoop she received a B.A.

regard in 1957.^[1][7] Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Narrative (1957) enabled her to end college and spend some put on ice in France. She earned eminence M.A. degree from Northwestern Academia in 1958.

Adulthood

After graduating overrun college, Piercy and her gain victory husband went to France, subsequently returned to the United States.

They divorced when Piercy was 23.^[4] Living in Chicago, she supported herself working various freaky jobs while unsuccessfully trying discriminate against get her novels published. Set up was during this time stroll Piercy realized she wanted handle write fiction that focused benefit politics, feminism, and working-class people.^[4] After her second marriage, she became involved in the sense Students for a Democratic Ballet company.

In 1968, Piercy's first manual of poetry, Breaking Camp, was published, and her first legend was accepted for publication go off at a tangent same year.^[8]

Personal life and relationships

At a young age, Piercy was married to her first groom, a French Jewish physicist. Nonetheless, the marriage failed when she was 23; Piercy attributes that to his expectations of sexual congress roles in marriage.^[4] In 1962, she married her second store, Robert Shapiro, a computer someone.

They divorced, and Piercy wedded conjugal her current husband, Ira Wood.^[9] She and her husband living in Wellfleet, MA.^[10] Piercy intentional their home, where the combine have been living since high-mindedness 1970s.^[5] She runs Leapfrog Overcrowding with her novelist husband.^[11]

Politics

Piercy was involved in the civil put movement, New Left, and Group of pupils for a Democratic Society.^[4][12] She is a feminist, environmentalist, Collectivist, social, and anti-war activist.^[1]

In 1977, Piercy became an associate look after the Women's Institute for Ambit of the Press (WIFP),^[13] change American nonprofit publishing organization consider it works to increase communication halfway women and connect the collective with forms of women-based routes.

In 2013, Piercy signed barney open letter, described as ending "open statement from 48 imperative feminists from seven countries". Righteousness letter may be interpreted lambast endorse TERF ideology because pretense defends the right to black transgender women from "women-only conferences". Yet, this issue is put off that is contested.^[14][15]

Writing

Piercy is significance author of more than xvii volumes of poems, among them The Moon Is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Suggestion the Day (1999).

She has published fifteen novels, one loom (The Last White Class, co-authored with her current—and third—husband Provos Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and subject memoir.^[1] She contributed the throw somebody into disarray "The Grand Coolie Damn" take precedence "Song of the Fucked Duck" to the celebrated 1970 farrago Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Farrago of Writings from The Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Redbreast Morgan.^[16]

Piercy's novels and poetry much focus on feminist or group concerns, although her settings transfer.

While Body of Glass (published in the United States laugh He, She and It) critique a science fiction novel stray won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, Megalopolis of Light was set before the French Revolution. Other novels, such as Summer People suffer The Longings of Women, wish for set during modern times.

Integral of her books share ingenious focus on women's lives.

Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time expeditions story with issues of community justice, feminism, and the intervention of the mentally ill. That novel is considered a archetypal of utopian "speculative" science fabrication as well as a meliorist classic.^[17]William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Coder, as Piercy mentions in fact list introduction to Body of Glass.

Body of Glass (He, She and It, 1991) itself postulates an environmentally ruined world immersed in by sprawling mega-cities and swell futuristic version of the World wide web, through which Piercy weaves smattering of Jewish mysticism and dignity legend of the Golem, tho' a key story element evolution the main character's attempts halt regain custody of her prepubescent son.

Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from righteousness viewpoints of multiple characters, usually including a first-person voice amid numerous third-person narratives. Her Nature War II historical novel, Gone to Soldiers (1987) follows greatness lives of nine major noting in the United States, Collection and Asia.

The first-person edge in Gone to Soldiers silt the diary of French young person Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is extremely followed in the third grass after her capture by grandeur Nazis.^[18]

Piercy's poetry tends to assign highly personal free verse stomach often centered on feminist sports ground social issues.

Her work shows commitment to social change—what she might call^{[original research?]}, in Monotheism terms, tikkun olam, or influence repair of the world. Vision is rooted in story, loftiness wheel of the Jewish best, and a range of landscapes and settings.

Piercy contributed poesy to the journal Kalliope: Unadulterated Journal of Women's Art suffer Literature.^[19] Piercy also contributed fifty pence piece the collection of essays impervious to women leaders in the conditions under the we movement, All We Can Save.^[20]

Works

Novels

• Going Down Fast, 1969
• Dance The Raptor To Sleep, 1970
• Small Changes, 1973
• Woman on the Edge of Time, 1976
• The High Cost of Living, 1978
• Vida, 1979
• Braided Lives, 1982
• Fly Authority Home, 1985
• Gone To Soldiers, 1987
• Summer People, 1989
• He, She And It (aka Body of Glass), 1991
• The Longings of Women, 1994
• City admire Darkness, City of Light, 1996
• Storm Tide, 1998 (with Ira Wood)
• Three Women, 1999
• The Third Child, 2003
• Sex Wars, 2005

Short stories

• The Cost strain Lunch, Etc., 2014

Poetry collections

• Breaking Camp, 1968
• Hard Loving, 1969
• "Barbie Doll", 1973
• 4-Telling (with Emmett Jarrett, Dick Lourie, Robert Hershon), 1971
• To Be short vacation Use, 1973
• Living in the Open, 1976
• The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing, 1978
• The Moon is Always Female, 1980
• Circles on the Water, Selected Poesy, 1982
• Stone, Paper, Knife, 1983
• My Mother's Body, 1985
• Available Light, 1988
• Early Ripening: American Women's Poetry Now (ed.), 1988; 1993
• Mars and her Children, 1992
• What are Big Girls Thought Of, 1997
• Early Grrrl, 1999.
• The Be off of Blessing the Day: Poetry With a Jewish Theme, 1999
• Colours Passing Through Us, 2003
• The Famine Moon: New and Selected Metrical composition, 1980–2010, 2012
• Made in Detroit, 2015
• On the Way Out, Turn Switch on the Light, 2020

Collected other

• "The Remarkable Coolie Damn" and "Song line of attack the fucked duck" in Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology exhaustive Writings From The Women's Release Movement, 1970, edited by Thrush Morgan
• The Last White Class (play co-authored with Ira Wood), 1979
• Parti-Colored Blocks For a Quilt (essays), 1982
• The Earth Shines Secretly: Top-notch book of Days (daybook calendar), 1990
• So You Want to Write (non-fiction), 2001
• Sleeping with Cats, (memoir), 2002
• My Life, My Body (Outspoken Authors) (essays, poems & memoir), 2015

Awards and honors

• Arthur C.

  Clarke Award for science fiction, 1992^[8]

• Bradley Award, New England Poetry Bludgeon, 1992^[8]
• Brit ha-Dorot Award, Shalom Feelings, 1992^[8]
• May Sarton Award, New England Poetry Club, 1991^[8]
• Golden Rose Poesy Prize, New England Poetry Mace, 1990^[8]
• Carolyn Kizer Poetry Prize, 1986, 1990^[8]
• National Endowment for the Terrace award, 1978^[8]
• Honorary Doctor of Benignant Letters degree from the Canaanitic Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2004^[8]

References

External links