Yesterday's Distraction: Substituting for a Professor

I'm writing about this distraction after writing about today's because this one's a lot more positive and, frankly, interesting.

One of my favorite professors asked me to pinch-hit in his class because he needed to go get interviewed on NPR about his new book. Because I'm hoping for a free autographed copy and because I dig NPR, I agreed to do it.

Per his instructions, I led his class in a discussion on Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing." We talked about meat-packing and processing plants more than I would normally talk about in a literature course. Tillie Olsen actually grew up here in Omaha and dropped out of high school in 1929 to work various low-paying jobs, among them a meat-packing job where she tried to help form a union and, in turn, was arrested. She published a bit here and there about her experiences there, but after that spent more than two decades too busy as a working mother to get much writing done. When she did start writing again, she produced some fantastic short stories, then eventually litcrit that focused on feminism, minorities, and the working class. The particular short story "I Stand Here Ironing" focuses on the struggles of motherhood in the working class, something few (if any) of the students could apparently even relate to, but we still wound up with a pretty interesting discussion.

To learn more about Tillie Olsen and her writing, visit http://www.tillieolsen.net .