Marge Piercy

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Piercy, Marge (1936–), grew up poor and white in a black section of Detroit and was the first in her family to go to college (University of Michigan). Piercy early experienced class discrimination, racism, and the sufferings of women at the hands of men, all of which themes inform her numerous books of poetry and her novels. Her verse takes pleasure in the mundane—love and nature—as well as dramatizing the injustices of sexism. Her poetry includes Breaking Camp (1968), Hard Loving (1969), To Be of Use (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), What Are Big Girls Made Of? (1997), Early Grrrl: The Early Poems of Marge Piercy (1999), The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (1999), and Colors Passing Through Us (2003). Among her volumes of fiction are Going Down Fast (1969), Dance the Eagle to Sleep (1971), Small Changes (1973), Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), The High Cost of Living (1978), Vida (1980), Braided Lives (1982), Fly Away Home (1984), He, She and It (1991), The Longings of Women (1994), City of Darkness, City of Light (1996), Storm Tide (1998, written with her husband Ira Wood), and Three Women (1999).