Marge Piercy (b.1936) is an American poet, novelist, and social activist hailed as a contemporary feminist icon. Her works have a political bent and give voice to strong female characters.
Born to a Jewish-Welsh working-class family in Detroit, Piercy studied at Michigan and Northwestern universities and was active in the civil rights movement. She worked as an instructor and poet-in-residence before publishing her first collection of poetry, Breaking Camp (1968.)
Piercy’s poetry is dominated by the pleasures of love and nature and the injustices of sexism. Her later collections include The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing (1978,) Mars and Her Children (1992,) and What Are Big Girls Made Of? (1997.)
Piercy novels integrate feminism, science fiction, and social concerns. Her notable novels include Going Down Fast (1969,) Woman on the Edge of Time (1976,) He, She and It (1991; U.K.: Body of Glass, 1992, Arthur C Clarke Award,) City of Darkness, and City of Light (1996.) Woman on the Edge of Time, her best-known work, is a feminist sci-fi novel where a woman detained and drugged in a New York psychiatric hospital conjures up a utopian future world, but worries that it could unfurl a dystopia where the methodical use of mind-control fortifies the elite’s power.
Piercy wrote Sex Wars (2005,) set in the post-Civil War USA. Her memoir Sleeping with Cats appeared in 2002. After her mother died in 1981, Piercy renewed her interest in the Jewish faith, principally in Reconstructionist Judaism. Her nonfiction book about Passover Seder tradition is Pesach for the Rest of Us (2007.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Marge Piercy
Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.
—Marge Piercy
Topics: Understanding, Blessings, One liners
Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.
—Marge Piercy
Topics: History
Reflecting the values of the larger capitalistic society, there is no prestige whatsoever attached to actually working. Workers are invisible.
—Marge Piercy
Live as if you liked yourself — and it may happen.
—Marge Piercy
If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening.
—Marge Piercy
Topics: Friendship
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Kurt Vonnegut American Novelist
- Josiah Gilbert Holland American Editor, Novelist
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Poet
- Robert Penn Warren American Novelist, Poet
- Nelson Algren American Novelist
- Edgar Guest English-born American Poet
- Theodore Roethke American Poet
- Saul Bellow Canadian-born American Novelist
- William S. Burroughs American Novelist
- Edgar Allan Poe American Poet