Tillie Olsen

I Stand Here Ironing, by Tillie Olson was the story of a mother trying to figure out where things went wrong with her daughter. She has received a call from one of her daughter's teachers saying she (the daughter) needs help, and could she (the mother) please come in for a visit. The mother sees this as an exercise in futility as she herself has no idea how to help her daughter let alone tell someone else what to do to help her seemingly lost daughter. She keeps going back to the fact that her daughter had been such a beautiful baby, so full of promise. This thought keeps recurring as the mother goes over and over the girls awkwardness while growing up. There were years where the girl was considered homely, and it wasn't until recently that she was once again seen as a lovely, beautiful girl, but her new-found beauty is discomforting...she is not used to being a creature of beauty. Her mother talks of her daughter's uneasiness with herself now that she has grown into a young woman.
Most of the story is spent on the mother's sense of regret and remorse over the way her daughter was raised. She feels that she was a failure, and that even her best mothering was nowhere near adequate. She is constantly blaming herself for her daughter's awkwardness and dis-ease in life. She cannot get past the thought that even though she did the best she could, she is responsible for all her daughter's problems when in reality she has been a good mother, and everything she did was so her daughter would be safe and secure.
Tillie Olsen was a strong proponent of the rights of all individuals, and her stories portrayed the struggles of the underdogs and poverty stricken people of the United States. I think her writing holds so much power because she herself was forced to deal with poverty and had to work many menial jobs while trying to raise her family.