Marge Piercy (1936-)

I. Her life

Piercy was born on March 31^st, 1936 in Detroit, to Bert Bunnin and Robert Douglas Piercy. Raised by her mother and grandmother, Piercy received Jewish thinking when she was young, and started to write poetry when she was fifteen when the financial status becomes better for her family. Her grandfather Morris was murdered as a union organizer and her grandmother, the daughter of a rabbi, influenced Piercy most. Besides her grandparentsÕ affection, her mother has deep impact on her for her creativity and imagination were somehow inspired by her superstitious and imaginative mother. Till her fatherÕs death in 1985, Piercy was not close to her father and her elder brother, who was 14 years senior to her.

As a child, Piercy was not a healthy girl. She was almost killed by German measles and other diseases which kept her away from schooling for some time but made her find refuge in piles of books. Excel at academic performance, after graduating from high school, Piercy enrolled into University of Michigan with a scholarship and got her bachelor degree there. She chose to ride on the chance of a fellowship she has earned and get a master degree in North Western University in 1958. The previous two marriages did not last long: first marriage with a French Jew particle physicist ended up and hence he returned to States from France, and the sencond was a computer scientist, both of whom did not fully support her with her serious writing matters and hence felt left her. Since then, Piercy started to earn her own bread with meager salary and various works. Meanwhile, she continued to write poetry and involve in civil right movement. After three-years of teaching at the Indiana University at Gary, Piercy decided to quit her teaching position and devoted herself fully into her writing of poetry and fiction. After a decade of concentration at writing, she suffered from a health breakdown which brought her away from Urban areas and hence evade to the country side for her health sake.

II. Her works

Piercy is strongly influenced by Marxism, Feminism and Environmentalism which have all affected her perspectives when she writes, with depth, and explores social ideology and aestheticism. She is considered a productive feminist writer, an essayist and poet who has published thirty-six books as yet, including fifteen volumes of poetry, essays and at least fifteen novels ever since 1968. She shows her strong attachment to the nature and her concern toward the environment; it is believed that some of her works and poetries change because of different places she had been moving around. Moreover, she makes her heroine bespeak her concern with the world that she lives in through different roles of women.