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Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy, born March 31, 1936, is an American writer, a poet, and a figure of significant influence in the realm of progressive activism and feminist thought. Her literary contributions are vast and varied, including seminal works like Woman on the Edge of Time, a novel that has become a touchstone in speculative fiction, and He, She and It (published in the United States as Body of Glass), which garnered the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1993. Her sweeping historical novel, Gone to Soldiers, achieved bestseller status on The New York Times list and offered a profound narrative set against the backdrop of World War II. Piercy's writing is deeply informed by her Jewish heritage, her unwavering commitment to Marxist social and political principles, and her foundational feminist ideals.

Life

Family and Early Life

Marge Piercy entered the world in Detroit, Michigan on March 31, 1936. Her parents were Bert Piercy and Robert Piercy. While her father maintained a non-religious stance, stemming from a Presbyterian upbringing, Piercy was raised within the Jewish faith by her mother and her Orthodox Jewish maternal grandmother. It was her grandmother who bestowed upon her the Hebrew name, Marah.

Piercy's reflections on her childhood and her Jewish identity are particularly poignant. She has stated, "Jews and blacks were always lumped together when I grew up. I didn’t grow up 'white.' Jews weren't white. My first boyfriend was black. I didn't find out I was white until we spent time in Baltimore and I went to a segregated high school. I can't express how weird it was. Then I just figured they didn't know I was Jewish." This observation reveals a complex understanding of identity and race, forged in a period of significant social stratification.

Initially, Piercy was not a particularly diligent student. However, her intellectual curiosity and love for literature blossomed during a period in her mid-childhood when she was laid low by German measles and rheumatic fever. Confined to her bed with little else to do, she found solace and escape in books. "It taught me," she later recalled, "that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see." This experience laid the groundwork for her future as a writer, demonstrating the transformative power of narrative.

Education

Upon completing her studies at Mackenzie High School, Marge Piercy made history as the first member of her family to attend college. She enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she pursued her undergraduate studies, earning a B.A. degree in 1957. Her academic achievements were recognized with a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction in 1957, a distinction that not only helped finance her college education but also provided the means for a period of study and reflection in France. She furthered her education at Northwestern University, completing her M.A. degree in 1958.

Adulthood

Following her graduation, Piercy and her first husband embarked on a journey to France before returning to the United States. Their marriage dissolved when Piercy was just 23 years old. She then relocated to Chicago, where she navigated a series of part-time jobs to support herself while concurrently facing the challenges of attempting to get her early novels published. It was during this formative period that Piercy solidified her artistic vision: a desire to craft fiction that engaged directly with politics, championed feminist principles, and gave voice to the experiences of working-class individuals. After her second marriage, she became actively involved with Students for a Democratic Society, a prominent organization of the New Left. The year 1968 marked a significant milestone in her career: the publication of her debut poetry collection, Breaking Camp, and the acceptance of her first novel for publication.

Personal Life and Relationships

Piercy's early life included a marriage to a French Jewish physicist. However, this union concluded when she was 23, a separation she has attributed to his adherence to traditional gender roles within the marriage. In 1962, she entered into her second marriage with Robert Shapiro, a computer scientist. This marriage also ended in divorce. Her current husband is Ira Wood. Piercy and Wood reside in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where they have lived in a home that Piercy herself designed since the 1970s. Together, they manage Leapfrog Press, a publishing house.

Politics

Piercy's engagement with political and social movements has been a lifelong commitment. She was an active participant in the civil rights movement, the New Left, and the Students for a Democratic Society. Her activism extends to her identity as a feminist, an environmentalist, a proponent of Marxist ideals, and a dedicated social and anti-war activist.

In 1977, Piercy became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP), a non-profit organization in the United States dedicated to enhancing communication among women and connecting the public with media created by women.

In 2013, Piercy was among the signatories of an open letter that generated controversy for its potential endorsement of TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) ideology, as it defended the exclusion of transgender women from women-only gatherings. However, in a more recent statement on her blog in 2024, Piercy explicitly declared her support for trans individuals, stating, "I can’t understand the anger at trans people and LGBTQ etc in general.... Why shouldn’t someone decide they’ve been assigned the wrong gender? What business is it of governments?" This demonstrates an evolution or clarification of her stance on gender identity.

Writing

Marge Piercy is the author of more than seventeen volumes of poetry, including The Moon Is Always Female (1980), widely regarded as a feminist classic, and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999). Her prolific output also includes fifteen novels, a play co-authored with her husband Ira Wood titled The Last White Class, a collection of essays titled Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt, a non-fiction work, and a memoir. She contributed significant pieces, "The Grand Coolie Damn" and "Song of the Fucked Duck," to the influential 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from The Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.

Piercy's novels and poetry frequently explore themes of feminism and social justice, employing a diverse range of settings. Body of Glass (known in the U.S. as He, She and It), a science fiction novel, earned the Arthur C. Clarke Award. In contrast, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the tumultuous period of the French Revolution. Other novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women, are contemporary in their settings. Across all her works, a consistent focus on the complexities of women's lives remains a central element.

Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) masterfully blends a time travel narrative with a profound exploration of social justice, feminist theory, and the treatment of individuals with mental illness. This novel is recognized as a cornerstone of utopian "speculative" science fiction and a definitive feminist text. William Gibson, a prominent figure in the Cyberpunk movement, has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as a foundational influence, a point Piercy herself acknowledges in the introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It, 1991) envisions a future ravaged by environmental degradation, dominated by vast urban sprawls and an advanced version of the Internet. Within this futuristic landscape, Piercy skillfully integrates elements of Jewish mysticism and the ancient legend of the Golem, while centering the narrative on the protagonist's struggle to regain custody of her young son.

Many of Piercy's novels employ a multi-perspective narrative structure, often weaving first-person accounts into a tapestry of third-person storytelling. Her historical novel set during World War II, Gone to Soldiers (1987), meticulously follows the intertwined lives of nine principal characters across the United States, Europe, and Asia. The personal diary of a young French teenager, Jacqueline Levy-Monot, forms the first-person narrative in Gone to Soldiers, though her story is also depicted through a third-person lens, particularly after her capture by the Nazis.

Piercy's poetry is characterized by its deeply personal free verse style, frequently addressing feminist and social concerns. Her work consistently reflects a profound commitment to social change, which she often frames in Judaic terms as tikkun olam—the concept of repairing the world. Her poetic explorations are rooted in narrative tradition, the cyclical rhythms of the Jewish year, and a rich engagement with diverse landscapes and environments.

Piercy has contributed poems to notable journals such as Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Art and Literature and Earth's Daughters. She also contributed to the collection of essays by women leaders in the climate movement, All We Can Save.

Works

Novels

  • Going Down Fast , 1969
  • Dance The Eagle To Sleep, 1970
  • Small Changes, 1973
  • Woman on the Edge of Time, 1976
  • The High Cost of Living, 1978
  • Vida, 1979
  • Braided Lives, 1982
  • Fly Away Home, 1985
  • Gone To Soldiers, 1987
  • Summer People, 1989
  • He, She And It (aka Body of Glass), 1991
  • The Longings of Women, 1994
  • City of Darkness, City of Light, 1996
  • Storm Tide, 1998 (with Ira Wood)
  • Three Women, 1999
  • The Third Child, 2003
  • Sex Wars, 2005

Short Stories

  • The Cost of Lunch, Etc., 2014

Poetry Collections

  • Breaking Camp, 1968
  • Hard Loving, 1969
  • "Barbie Doll", 1973
  • 4-Telling (with Emmett Jarrett, Dick Lourie, Robert Hershon), 1971
  • To Be of Use, 1973
  • A Work of Artifice, 1973
  • Living in the Open, 1976
  • The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing, 1978
  • The Moon is Always Female, 1980
  • Circles on the Water, Selected Poems, 1982
  • Stone, Paper, Knife, 1983
  • My Mother's Body, 1985
  • Available Light, 1988
  • Early Ripening: American Women's Poetry Now (ed.), 1988; 1993
  • Mars and her Children, 1992
  • What are Big Girls Made Of, 1997
  • Early Grrrl, 1999.
  • The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems With a Jewish Theme, 1999
  • Colours Passing Through Us, 2003
  • The Crooked Inheritance, 2006
  • The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980–2010, 2012
  • Made in Detroit, 2015
  • On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light, 2020

Collected Other Works

  • "The Grand Coolie Damn" and "Song of the fucked duck" in Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement, 1970, edited by Robin Morgan
  • The Last White Class (play co-authored with Ira Wood), 1979
  • Parti-Colored Blocks For a Quilt (essays), 1982
  • The Earth Shines Secretly: A book of Days (daybook calendar), 1990
  • So You Want to Write (non-fiction), 2001
  • Sleeping with Cats, (memoir), 2002
  • My Life, My Body (Outspoken Authors) (essays, poems & memoir), 2015

Awards and Honors

  • Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, 1992
  • Bradley Award, New England Poetry Club, 1992
  • Brit ha-Dorot Award, Shalom Center, 1992
  • May Sarton Award, New England Poetry Club, 1991
  • Golden Rose Poetry Prize, New England Poetry Club, 1990
  • Carolyn Kizer Poetry Prize, 1986, 1990
  • National Endowment for the Arts award, 1978
  • Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2004