Marge Piercy

Sue B. Walker

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 31 Mar 1936
Activity 1956-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

Feminist

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet

Resources

Piercy's Works

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Marge Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Robert Douglas and Bert Bernice Bunnin Piercy. Grant Courtade, her mother's son by a previous marriage, was fourteen years her senior and her only sibling. Piercy says that although the two children “grew out of the same mother, they never spoke real words since she turned twelve”. In spite of this fact, he was influential in her life.

What Are Big Girls Made Of?

(1997) contains poems about her half-brother, and she believes that it is he who gave her “a license / for the right of the body to joy”;.

Piercy's father repaired machinery for Westinghouse most of his adult life though he was laid off for a year and a half during the Depression. Born from Welsh-English stock, he grew up in a soft-coal mining town in

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1710 words

Citation: Walker, Sue B.. "Marge Piercy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 July 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3562, accessed 21 November 2024.]