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Marge Piercy
Date: 2000
From: Contemporary Literary Criticism(Vol. 128. )
Publisher: Gale
Document Type: Biography
Length: 2,116 words
About this Person
Born: March 31, 1936 in Detroit, Michigan, United States
Nationality: American
Occupation: Writer
Full Text:
Introduction
Among the most distinguished contemporary feminist writers, Marge Piercy is recognized as a trenchant poet and novelist whose
work is infused with explicit political statement and social critique. Her direct, highly personal writing, informed by her experiences as
a radical political activist during the 1960s and 1970s, condemns the victimization—both physical and psychological—of women and
other marginalized individuals under the patriarchal, capitalist ideologies of mainstream American society. Piercy's best known
novels, including Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Braided Lives (1982), and Gone to Soldiers (1987), reveal her ability to convey
such themes in genres ranging from science fiction to social realism and historical fiction. An outspoken feminist and humanitarian,
Piercy emphasizes the utilitarian aspect of her work as a vehicle for effective communication, evident in the colloquial, polemical tone
of her fiction and free verse.
Biographical Information
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Piercy was raised by her Welsh father, a machinist, and Jewish mother in a working-class neighborhood of
the city; Piercy also had an older half-brother, her mother's child from a previous marriage. While Piercy's creativity was inspired by
her mother's curiosity and maternal grandmother's storytelling, her political consciousness was forged by the repressive social
climate and economic disparities she experienced during her formative years. Piercy won a scholarship to attend the University of
Michigan, becoming the first member of her family to receive a college education. While at Michigan she won Hopwood Awards in
poetry and fiction and became involved in radical politics. She traveled to France after completing her A.B. in 1957, then enrolled at
Northwestern University where she earned her M.A. degree in 1958. While living in Chicago, Piercy worked odd jobs to support her
writing and taught at the Gary extension of Indiana University from 1960-62. Her first marriage to a French-Jewish physicist was
short-lived; she remarried in 1962, though this unconventional, open relationship deteriorated by the mid-1970s.
During the 1960s, Piercy became active in the civil rights and antiwar movements as an organizer for the left-wing political
organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), though shifted her allegiance to the women's movement by the end of the
decade. She published her first volume of poetry, Breaking Camp (1968), and first novel, Going Down Fast (1969), during this period.
Piercy won the Borestone Mountain Poetry award in 1968 and 1974. She worked as a writer-in-residence and visiting lecturer at
various colleges during the 1970s, and held professorships at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and the University of
Cincinnati. After moving between Boston, San Francisco, and New York, Piercy finally settled in rural Cape Cod, where she has
made her home since 1971. Piercy married writer Ira Wood, her third husband, in 1982, with whom she has collaborated on several
works. She won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1978 and many additional honors, including the Orion Scott
Award in the Humanities, the Carolyn Kizer Poetry Prize in 1986 and 1990, a Shaeffer Eaton-PEN New England award in 1989, the
Golden Rose Poetry Prize in 1990, the May Sarton Award in 1991, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1993 for He, She, and It (1991).
Major Works
Piercy's fiction and poetry is a direct expression of her feminist and leftist political commitments. In language that is alternately
realistic, didactic, and poetic, Piercy repeatedly draws attention to the suffering of the socially persecuted—women, the poor, racial
minorities, lesbians—and the mercenary ethics of their oppressors—the government, corporations, technocrats, abusive men,
repressive gender roles—often incorporating multiple narrators to this end. Her first novel, Going Down Fast, exposes the injustice of
urban gentrification as callous city planners move to raze an existing low-income neighborhood to build upscale residences. Drawing
upon her experiences as an SDS activist, Dance the Eagle to Sleep (1971) involves a small band of young political agitators and
idealists who abandon the city to organize an alternative, utopian community based on Native American culture. Small Changes
(1973), set in Boston during the 1960s, relates the parallel struggles of two young women—a middle-class Jew and working-class
lesbian—whose experiences reveal the effects of female subjugation across class lines. Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) portrays
the state's manipulation and control of the individual through the horrific experiences of a young Chicano woman who is
institutionalized in an insane asylum. There she is anesthetized, stripped of her identity, sterilized, and detained against her will,
prompting her to experience hallucinatory leaps into an egalitarian future world where, in stark contrast to the dystopic near present,
there are no class, race, or gender divisions among its inhabitants.
The High Cost of Living (1978) relates the dilemmas faced by a lesbian graduate student in Detroit who struggles to reconcile her
literary aspirations, financial needs, and self-respect within the demoralizing structure of the academic establishment. Vida (1980),
also based on Piercy's involvement with the SDS, features protagonist Davida Asch, a beautiful, renegade political radical whose
revolutionary activities during the 1960s have forced her underground. Through flashbacks Vida's recollections document the rise and
fall of the “Network,” the militant antiwar faction that she once headed, her long period of hiding and desolation, and newfound love
with another fugitive. Braided Lives (1982), Piercy's most autobiographic novel, portrays the cultural oppression of women during the
1950s. The protagonist, a scholarship student and aspiring writer from humble origins in Detroit, struggles to define herself against
the social humiliations of her milieu—particularly those surrounding sexuality, marriage, abortion, and rape—while she watches her
friends succumb to the conventional roles of their mothers. Fly Away Home (1984), set amid the exclusionary prosperity of
Reaganomics, traces the growing awareness of protagonist Daria Walker, a traditional wife who becomes liberated and politically
engaged after discovering her husband's dark dealings as a white-collar slum lord and arsonist who victimizes the poor. Gone to
Soldiers (1987), a work of historical fiction, follows the lives of ten main characters—six women, four men—on the home front and
abroad during the Second World War. Their various experiences as civilians, soldiers, Resistance fighters, and refugees illustrate the
personal disruptions, despair, and harrowing realities of the war, especially among women.
Returning to small-scale interpersonal drama in her next novel, Summer People (1989) revolves around real estate dealings on Cape
Cod and the deterioration of a long-term love triangle involving a married couple and their female neighbor. He, She, and It, a work of
science fiction that borrows from the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson, involves a Jewish woman's relationship with an illegal
cyborg, Yod, in a dystopic twenty-first century world. Yod, like a golem of the Hebrew folklore, is designed to protect her Jewish
community from danger—in this case, the evils of the corporate state and criminal underworld—raising ethical questions about the
creation and destructive potential of technology. The Longings of Women (1994) juxtaposes the precarious lives of three very
different women—a sixty-one-year-old homeless housekeeper, an unhappily married college professor, and a young wife accused of
murdering her husband—each of whom seek, on their own separate terms, the keys to emotional and physical security. City of
Darkness, City of Light (1996), an extensively researched work of historical fiction, is a reinterpretation of events surrounding the
French Revolution that parallels the vicissitudes of American leftist politics during the 1960s and 1970s. Presented through the
perspective of six historical personages, both male and female, Piercy traces the formative events in each characters' life and their
involvement in the radical politics, murderous rampages, and fractious alliances of their time.
In Storm Tide (1998), written in collaboration with husband Ira Wood, Piercy returns to a Cape Cod setting where the protagonist, a
divorced, former professional baseball player, becomes entangled in a web of sexual intrigue, small-town politics, and guilt over a
deadly accident. Three Women (1999), which centers upon strained mother-daughter relationships, involves a successful lawyer
whose midlife contentment is suddenly shattered when she must take in her unemployed, emotionally scarred daughter and
demanding, stroke-afflicted mother. As in her novels, Piercy's poetry reveals her effort to merge literature and political engagement.
Her socially and ecologically conscious verse, influenced by the poetry of Walt Whitman and Muriel Rukeyser, is characterized by its
informality, autobiographic content, striking imagery, depiction of everyday life and objects, and political message. Her first several
volumes, Breaking Camp, Hard Loving (1969), and To Be of Use (1973), composed while active in the civil rights, peace, and
women's movements, contain some of her most polemical verse. Living in the Open (1976) marks a shift in focus from urban to rural
environments following her move from New York to Cape Cod. Nature themes are also present in The Twelve-Spoked Wheel
Flashing (1978) and The Moon Is Always Female (1980), which explore personal and feminist concerns in relation to the archetypal
cycles of Mother Earth and the moon. Circles on the Water (1982) contains selections from her six previous volumes along with
several new poems. Piercy's subsequent volumes— Stone, Paper, Knife (1983), My Mother's Body (1985), Available Light (1988),
Mars and Her Children (1992), and What Are Big Girls Made Of? (1997)—are less overtly political, though continue to focus on her
private struggles with love, sexuality, family relationships, female self-identity, domestic life, and the redemptive pleasures of the
natural world. The Art of Blessing the Day (1999) contains previous and new poems in which Piercy explores her Jewish heritage and
religious faith. Early Grrrl (1999), another collection of new and previous poems, is dedicated to the new generation of fringe feminists
behind the small magazine and Internet-based “Grrrl” movement. Piercy has also published a collection of her articles, book reviews,
and interviews in Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt (1982).
Critical Reception
Piercy is widely recognized as a major contemporary feminist poet and novelist. Her writing in both genres is praised for its intensity,
clarity, and important social message. While some critics disapprove of her emotional tenor and propagandistic condemnation of
social, economic, and environmental ills, others praise the passion and immediacy of her depictions of injustice and exploitation.
“Piercy has always seemed to be ahead of her time in dealing with contemporary social and political issues,” writes Sue Walker, “and
she has done this with some risk to popular acclaim, but with an authenticity that should merit more lasting critical recognition and
attention.” Critics also appreciate Piercy's insight into the aspirations and shortcomings of organized activism and her ability to
present compelling, multidimensional characters whose individual complexity often rises above the socially malignant stereotype they
are intended to illustrate. “If Piercy is accused of being preachy,” Joyce R. Ladenson explains, “it is because her characters are struck
by pain which they need to explain and about which they are enraged once they examine its social sources.” Among her many novels
Woman on the Edge of Time is generally regarded as her most original and important, considered by many a classic of feminist
science fiction. Small Changes, Braided Lives, and Gone to Soldiers have also attracted favorable reviews and continued critical
interest, though other novels such as Summer People, Fly Away Home, and He, She, and It have been deemed less successful. As
Judith Wynn comments in a review of The Longings of Women, “Piercy is not an elegant writer. Interesting, swift-moving plots and
careful social observation are her main strengths.” Despite the bleak circumstances she often describes, Piercy's fiction and poetry is
noted for its essentially optimistic outlook which, in keeping with her artistic commitment to political action, continually presents
alternatives to the status quo and inspires the possibility of communal solidarity and meaningful change.
Principal Works
Breaking Camp (poetry) 1968
Going Down Fast (novel) 1969
Hard Loving (poetry) 1969
Dance the Eagle to Sleep (novel) 1971
4-Telling [with Bob Herson, Emmet Jarrett, and Dick Lourie] (poetry) 1971
Small Changes (novel) 1973
To Be of Use (poetry) 1973
Living in the Open (poetry) 1976
Woman on the Edge of Time (novel) 1976
The High Cost of Living (novel) 1978
The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing (poetry) 1978
The Moon Is Always Female (poetry) 1980
Vida (novel) 1980
Braided Lives (novel) 1982
Circles on the Water: Selected Poems (poetry) 1982
Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt (prose) 1982
Stone, Paper, Knife (poetry) 1983
Fly Away Home (novel) 1984
My Mother's Body (poetry) 1985
Gone to Soldiers (novel) 1987
Available Light (poetry) 1988
Early Ripening: American Women Poets Now [editor] (poetry) 1988
Summer People (novel) 1989
He, She, and It (novel) 1991
Mars and Her Children (poetry) 1992
The Longings of Women (novel) 1994
City of Darkness, City of Light (novel) 1996
What Are Big Girls Made Of? (poetry) 1997
Storm Tide [with Ira Wood] (novel) 1998
The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (poetry) 1999
Early Grrrl: The Early Poems of Marge Piercy (poetry) 1999
Three Women (novel) 1999
FURTHER READINGS
Criticism
Carnes, Pauli. “Chasing Their Tales.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (3 April 1994): 5. A positive review of The Longings of
Women.
Gould, Jean. “Marge Piercy.” In her Modern American Women Poets, pp. 297-305. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1984.
Provides an overview of Piercy's life, literary career, and poetry.
Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. “Mothers Yesterday and Mothers Tomorrow, But Never Mothers Today: Woman on the Edge of Time and The
Handmaid's Tale.” In Mother Without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood, pp. 158-83. Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1997. Examines the significance of maternal loss and the ideology of reproduction, motherhood, and female
identity in Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
Lauret, Maria. “Seizing Time and Making New: Marge Piercy's Vida.” In her Liberating Literature, pp. 144-64. London and New York:
Routledge, 1994. Provides analysis of the narrative presentation, historical context, and radical political and feminist themes of Vida.
Mesic, Penelope. Review of Stone, Paper, Knife, by Marge Piercy. Poetry CXLIII, No. 5 (February 1984): 299-300. Provides
unfavorable assessment of Stone, Paper, Knife.
Orr, Elaine Neil. “Negotiated Motherhood: Contradictory Leanings in Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. ” In her Subject to
Negotiation: Reading Feminist Criticism and American Women's Fictions, pp. 105-26. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia,
1997. Examines conflicting feminist interpretations of motherhood, biological identity, and female social experience in Woman on the
Edge of Time.
Pacernick, Gary. “Interview with Marge Piercy.” Prairie Schooner 71, No. 4 (Winter 1997): 82-6. Piercy discusses the craft of poetry
and the Jewish, mythological, and personal themes in her work.
Rapping, Elayne. “Vintage Piercy.” Women's Review of Books XI, Nos. 10-11 (July 1994): 46. A review offering qualified praise for
The Longings of Women.
Redding, Arthur F. “The Fantasy Life of the Movement: The Rhetoric of Violence on the New Left and After.” In his Raids on Human
Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and Violence, pp. 160-212. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. Discusses
the failure of leftist political radicalism during the 1970s, drawing upon Piercy's Vida as a fictional illustration.
Rodden, John. “A Harsh Day's Light: An Interview with Marge Piercy.” Kenyon Review XX, No. 2 (Spring 1998): 132-43. Piercy
discusses her personal life and related political, feminist, and autobiographic aspects of her poetry.
Shands, Kerstin W. The Repair of the World: The Novels of Marge Piercy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. A comprehensive,
book-length critical study of Piercy's novels.
Sizemore, Christine W. “Masculine and Feminine Cities: Marge Piercy's Going Down Fast and Fly Away Home.” Frontiers: A Journal
of Women Studies XIII, No. 1 (1992): 90-110. Examines Piercy's presentation of female characters and their relationship to urban
settings in Going Down Fast and Fly Away Home.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
"Marge Piercy." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 128, Gale, 2000. Gale Literature Resource Center,
link.gale.com/apps/doc/WOKDPP761631990/GLS?u=avlr&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=409d6721. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024.
Gale Document Number: GALE|WOKDPP761631990