CHAPTER 1
Understanding Marge Piercy
Love, nature, politics, Judaism, family (blood and built), relationships, gardens, activism, community, catsâeach of these is interwoven throughout Marge Piercyâs work and life. Piercy (b. 1936) is one of the most astute U.S. novelists and poets currently writing. Notably prolific, she has published seventeen novels, nineteen books of poetry, a memoir, and collections of essays and short stories; yet, she remains undervalued in the literary establishment and unknown by many readers. Piercy confronts complicated issues of power, identity, and privilegeâgender, race, sexuality, socioeconomic class, disability, age, nationalism, militarism, corporate hegemonyâwith a lucidity and lyricism not always found in contemporary fiction. Piercy began publishing her work in the 1960s, and her decades-long career continues to encompass the major postâWorld War II social movements and changing social mores.
Piercyâs biography is as rich and varied as that of any of her characters. She grew up in a working-class family in Detroit. Her mother, Bert Bunnin Piercy, was Jewish; her father, Robert Piercy, was not. In her memoir, Sleeping with Cats, Piercy writes that her âfatherâs family was casually and relentlessly anti-Semiticâ (20). Her parents were âill suitedâ (31) in Piercyâs estimation, and their relationship was rocky: âThey were always at war, and I was one of their battlegroundsâ (14). Although Robert Piercy was not physically violent with his wife, he did hit and kick his daughter (36). He wanted a son, and so Piercy was ânever satisfactoryâ; she felt that her father never really loved her and that she did not and could not please him. He had a stronger relationship with Piercyâs half-brother, the child of her motherâs earlier marriage, who was quite a bit older than Piercy (14).
Piercy comes from âa long line of storytelling womenâ (Sleeping 13). She had a strong bond with her maternal grandmother, Hannah, who lived with her family during the summer. Hannah was an Orthodox Jew who, Piercy said, âgave me my religious educationâ (Templin 4). Piercyâs mother often played word games with her; she credits her mother with teaching her to observe closely, a practice that benefits all writers. However, once Piercy entered puberty, the relationship between her and her mother became much more difficult (Sleeping 10), and it was not until the later years of her motherâs life that they grew close again. The unexpected and sudden death of her mother was a very difficult time for Piercy.
Piercyâs family struggled economically. She wore hand-me-down clothes; there was not money for medical or dental care; and often there was minimal food available. Still, her family was very invested in identifying as middle class, seeing owning a car and a house as important class markers. In the poem âMy motherâs novelâ from The Moon Is Always Female, Piercy describes her mother as âa small woman of large longingsâ who âmarried her way / at length into the solid workingclassâ (8, 15). Piercyâs mother was a housewife and worked âincessantlyâ (Sleeping 15). In her writing and in her own life, Piercy consistently insists on recognizing that domestic, emotional labor is work.
Growing up in the fifties was very difficult for Piercy. The culture, social practices, and societal expectations combined to be âa mutilating time to grow up femaleâ (âThrough the Cracksâ 126). She could not find âimages of a life I considered good or useful or dignifiedâŚ. Nowhere could I find a community to heal myself to in struggle.â Piercy says to John Rodden: âIt feels nutty when itâs only you. Youâre regarded as insane. It isnât until there exists some kind of framework in which to hold onto the insights [feminist consciousness] that it makes any sense. To be concerned with these things by yourself was, in the 1950s, to be a little crazyâ (137). It was not until the sixties that she was able to think, ââI might be useful, I might speak and be heard, listen and receiveââ (âThrough the Cracksâ 127).
Piercy has frequently challenged the complaints of other writers about the difficulty of writing, acknowledging that writing âis frequently hardâ but that âit beats anything else I was ever paid for, and sometimes to this day I remain astonished I am paid for writing poems and making up storiesâ (âWhat I Do When I Writeâ 25). She has also asserted, âI like to write. Iâm probably unusual in that I am a writer who actually likes to writeâ (Lyons 340). She has also commented about the difficulty of making a living as a writer: âYou donât get paid muchâŚ. I live two-thirds off my speaking and teaching gigsâ (Lyons 333). This also has an impact on her future, as âI wonât have a pensionâ (âOur Moneyâ).
Piercy was an avid reader throughout her childhood and adolescence. Weekly library visits with her mother gave her access to books that began to give her a sense that âmy life might be different, wider than my motherâsâ (Sleeping 32). She reflects that âperhaps I was looking for role models, for lives to try on mentallyâ (48). When Piercy was fifteen, her family moved to a house large enough that she was able to have a room of her own; it was with that new-found privacy that she began to write (âThe Lunar Cycleâ 63; âAn Interview with Denise Wagnerâ 204). As Piercy describes it, âI wanted to be a writer and had been turning out both poetry and prose since I was fifteen and got a room of my own with a door that shutâ (âThe City as Battlegroundâ 168).1 In that room, she has written, âI became who I was to beâ (Sleeping 69).
Piercy was the first person in her family to attend college. Her parents opposed her desire to pursue higher education and âmistrusted college and higher education for a womanâ (Sleeping 92). Her mother wanted her to have an office job, because Bert âcould not imagine any higher calling for a woman than to have a nice secretarial job in an office with middle-class men to flirt with, wearing nice clothes to work and bringing home a little moneyâ (âThingsâ 95). Their lack of support meant that Piercy financed her own education from her savings from jobs she held as a teenager, from scholarships she earned and from jobs she held during her undergraduate years. Piercy earned her B.A. in 1957 from the University of Michigan, from which she received several Hopwood awards and where she has donated her papers.
After college, Piercy traveled to France with Michel Schiff, a French physicist who she then married. Her parents refused to attend the wedding, which Piercy âcould not understandâ (Sleeping 112). She apparently assumed that they would value Schiff as a good partner for their daughter, since he was an educated, professional man from a comfortable class status. She earned her M.A. from Northwestern University in 1958. They divorced in 1959. In 1962 she married her second husband, Robert Shapiro, a computer scientist; they moved to Wellfleet on Cape Cod in the early 1970s. At Shapiroâs instigation but with Piercyâs eventual agreement, part of the time they were together they shared an open marriageâeach of them free to engage in relationships with others as they chose. Open marriage was a political and personal strategy to attempt to reject the patriarchal nuclear family, and often these secondary lovers became part of their family. Piercy and Shapiro divorced in 1980, however, when their primary relationship soured.
After being friends and then romantically involved for several years, Piercy and Ira Wood married in 1982. Wood is younger than Piercy, something she has called âa tradition in my motherâs familyâ since her mother and her aunt both had younger husbands (Sleeping 4). Piercy has suggested that âyounger men in our society at present have less rigid expectations about sex roles than do men my age or olderâ (Lyons 343), a sentiment also voiced by Natalie in Vida (158). Piercy and Wood have continued to live on Cape Cod where they have maintained extensive food and flower gardens; Piercy has estimated that they âgrow 90% of our own vegetables, can, freeze, dehydrateâ (Barnat). They co-founded and ran the publishing house Leapfrog Press for several years, they have co-written a play and a novel, and they teach writing workshops together. They share many interests, Piercy has written, âbut the core of our relationship has always been communication and sex, the exchange of words and the joining of our bodiesâ (Sleeping 8). Early on in her life, Piercy decided not to have children and has never regretted that decision (339); she observes that most of her motherâs generation of Bunnins âwere childless by choiceâ (26). Piercy has, however, almost always had cats. In fact, she says her âlife has a spine of catsâ (4), indicating their centrality in her world.
Piercy almost died as a child, after bouts of German measles and rheumatic fever (Sleeping 28). She has continued to experience health challenges throughout her life, exacerbated by lack of access to medical care early in her life due to poverty. She has suggested that âpart of my health problems are a result of my childhood, and part from my political involvementâespecially being gassedâ (Lyons 340). She became quite ill during her time in New York with lung problems she attributes both to years of smoking and being gassed frequently in protests and demonstrations (âAfterthoughtsâ 317â18). More recently, she has had eye surgery and two knee replacements.
For much of Piercyâs emerging and early adulthood, she worked a variety of low-wage jobs in order to support herself, rising early in the morning to write before she left for work. She has described the motivation of economic necessity: âin order to survive, I worked as a secretary, I was an artistâs model, switchboard operator, all that shitâ (Godwin 29). She has always been politically active; her political commitments were also time-consuming and for many years she fit her writing into the spaces around these other activities. Early on, she was very involved in antiâVietnam War activism, with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). Piercy was also one of the founders of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), which she described both as âan adult chapterâ of SDS (Sleeping 177) and as âan early form of NACLAâ (Godwin 29).
The sexism embedded throughout the New Left led Piercy to embrace womenâs liberation (Sleeping 204â5). Leviathan, a journal founded to explore issues of concern to MDS, published her essay âThe Grand Coolie Damâ in November 1969; it was republished in a collection of feminist essays in 1970. Piercy called out the sexism endemic in the Movement in her opening question: âThe Movement is supposed to be for human liberation: how come the condition of women inside it is no better than outside?â (421). She noted the exploitation of womenâs labor within the movement, the silencing and ignoring of womenâs voices, and the posturing of men to maintain or enhance their standing within the Movement. Piercy also critiqued Movement strategies, noting their lack of success in âlearning how to reach all kinds of peopleâ (426) and pointing out that the âmonstrosities of jargonâ in Movement publications âfail to make our politics lucid to people on a level where they can become autonomous political thinkers and doersâ (427). This issue surfaces in Vida when Vida and Joel want to act rather than write yet another position paper that will not resonate with the general public (272, 277). Piercy acknowledged her past internalization and acceptance of the male structures and male domination of the Movement, refusing the suggestion that âwomenâs liberation is a secondary issue, to be dealt with after the war is wonâ (437).
Piercy continued to work in the Movement, but also began to ground herself in feminist activism. She organized consciousness-raising sessions in a newly established Womenâs Center (Sleeping 205), helped start Cape Cod Womenâs Liberation (213), co-wrote Getting Together: How to Start a Consciousness-Raising Group with Jane Freeman, and was part of the Boston-based Bread and Roses (221). In the FAQ section of her website, she writes of her identification as a feminist: âI canât imagine not identifying strongly as a woman and not wanting things to be better and safer and more fun and less dangerous for myself and other women.â
Piercy has continued to be engaged in activism and political struggles for social change. She participated in efforts to resist the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and currently works to try to shut down the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, as well as being involved in other local community issues on Cape Cod, particularly those related to the environment. She recently disclosed that after the 2016 Presidential election, âI canât seem to write anything but political poems since the election ⌠Writing political poems requires just as much craft as writing poems bout [sic] irises or a lover. But I just canât get my mind around any other subject yetâ (âBusy Week, Snip, Etc.â). Many of her activist experiences and commitments inform her writing.
Piercy has lived in many places in addition to Detroit, including Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and New York. She has deeply inhabited cityscapes and landscapes and they have flowed into her work. Lauren Belfer has written of Sex Wars that one aspect of the plot line âbecomes merely an extended opportunity for Piercy to explore still more neighborhoods of the city.â Piercy has acknowledged, âthe sense of place is extremely important to me in being able to enter a characterâs past or presentâ (âLife of Proseâ). When Piercy moved to the Cape, carving out dedicated time for writing was a priority for her; Piercy noted that âfrom the time I arrived on the Cape, one of the things I chose explicitly was to put my writing firstâ (Sleeping 218). She built friendships with many other notable writers, including Denise Levertov and Adrienne Rich, and Piercy particularly cherished the ability to talk with them about writing (Sleeping 225); of Rich, Piercy noted that âI used to see her and have lunch with her on a regular basisâ (âTrying to Calm Downâ). Piercy also blogs frequently on her website (margepiercy.com) where she has shared details of life on the Cape, gardening adventures, accounts of hosting and entertaining guests, cat exploits, what she is reading, her political views and analyses, works in progress, and other musings.
For much of her career Piercy has also selectively reviewed the work of others, particularly other women writers. She has regarded this as âa dutyâ; to Piercy, reviewing âfeels more like sharing the life-support jobs in a household than like creativityâ (âMirror Imageâ 208). She has viewed it as a necessity, âsomething you must put back in the movement, something you must do for othersâ (209). Piercy told Peggy Friedmann and Ruthann Robson, âI think of it as a service activityâ (âAn Interviewâ 137). Because âthereâs so much womenâs work that doesnât get reviewed at all,â Piercy has maintained that âreviewing is something that I just have to doâ (âInterview with Karla Hammondâ 37). In recent years, however, the activity of reviewing other writers has become less necessary for her: âI think critiquing other peopleâs work is something I did a lot of between thirty and sixty years of age, but itâs not a priority now. I have too much to do in the time left meâ (Casper). Perhaps feeling that she has paid her dues in this arena has led her to be able to concentrate fully on her own writing. But it is also an economic decision; as she reminded Monica Casper, âI live off my writing, which means I am very busy writing, giving readings, speeches, workshops.â
Piercy has been mentoring other writers through her annual juried poetry workshops and through the workshops she and Wood offer around the country. She has also been remarkably consistent in the public advice she shares with aspiring writers. When Mary Mackey asked what was âthe single most important thing anyone who wants to be a serious writer should know,â Piercy responded: âIf you want to write short stories, read short stories. Donât read a book about writing short storiesâ (Mackey). In an interview with Michael Luzzi she said, âto young writers all you can say is read and write and read and write and read and writeâ (151). In response to a question by Dana Barnat, Piercy advised, âread, read, readâŚ. Look at the craftâŚ. Learn to revise.â In her poem âFor the Young Who Want To,â Piercy is quite definitive and pointed in her statement: âThe real writer is one / who really writesâ (31â32).
Although Piercyâs work is clearly inspired by and grounded in feminism, it is not the feminist caricature embodied in some mainstream media (shrill, manhating, sex-hating, and so on), but a more complex, nuanced, and accurate image of feminism that calls attention to its benefits for men as well as for women, and also acknowledges and critiques power struggles between women. As a Booklist review of her novel Small Changes described, âPiercy is not a simple proselytizer; she writes about authentic peopleâyoung men and women whose small changes are really landmarks of inner strength or lossâ (633). Susan Mernit asserted that âPiercy has consistently sought to show how personal history is shaped by political beliefs and social conditionsâ (18). Piercy noted that she writes âcharacter-centered fictionâ (âAn Interview with Allison Plattâ 177) and novels where readers want to know âwhat thenâ (âMirror Imagesâ 211); fiction, including hers, she said, âis still about pattern in human lifeâ (211). Far from being a superficial fictional cover for feminist ideology, Piercyâs novels are skillfully developed, full of compelling plots and engaging characters.
Piercyâs fiction makes important contributions to literary representations of social movementsâincluding feminism and the anti-war movementâbut, pigeonholing her writing as just political fiction is too facile and limiting. Mernit argued in her review of Fly Away Home that Piercyâs work is evidence âthat artistic creation is not incompatible with political commitmentâ (18). Piercy noted the double standard that motivates those critiques: âPeople tend to define âpoliticalâ or âpolemicalâ in terms of what is not congruent with their ideasâŚ. The defense of the status quo is as political as an attack on itâ (âInterview with Karla Hammondâ 34). That loaded description ignores the ways in which her work engages with a wide range of contemporary American experiences, and the ways in which she has used specific stories to illuminate overarching concerns. This perception of her work is likely responsible for the absence of sustained attention to Piercyâs writing.
Although Nan Nowik called Piercy one of our âmost prolific and important contemporary women writersâ (208), the perception that Piercyâs work is only valuable politically, rather than as literature, has impacted her ability to achieve mainstream recognition. As Piercy commented, although readers in the general public and academics who âproduce interesting criticismâ value her work, the literary establishment has generally failed to recognize it. Piercy observed that she is âa writer not ever part of the establishmentâ (âWhat I Do When I Writeâ 26). She has predicted: âI see no sign I will be recognized in that way until I am deadâ (Sleeping 339). Piercy has also discussed the benefits of publishing for a broad audience: âI want to reach people who donât go into bookstores. So that means mass paperback is very important to me.â She added: âI also want to reach people who do go into bookstoresâ (âInterview with Karla Hammondâ 25), indicating a desire to be read by the widest range and number of people possible.
In many of Piercyâs novels and poems, she has given voice to multiple perspectives and used flashbacks to provide the personal and family histories of her characters. These narrative choices help th...