Meridel Le Sueur (February 22, 1900 â November 14, 1996) was an American writer associated with the proletarian literature movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Born as Meridel Wharton, she assumed the name of her mother's second husband, Arthur Le Sueur, the former Socialist mayor of Minot, North Dakota. Her writingsâÂÂincluding journalistic pieces, short stories, and poetryâÂÂoften dealt with the everyday lives of working-class women. She wrote from a perspective shaped by Marxist and feminist ideas. Her best-known works include the 1932 essay âÂÂWomen on the Breadlinesâ and the novel The Girl. Le SueurâÂÂs close association with Communist organizations eventually led to her being blacklisted in the 1950s during the Cold War. This sharply reduced the amount of work she was able to publish. Interest in her work revived in the 1970s and 1980s, when scholars and second-wave feminists reassessed her contributions to American radical and feminist literature.
Meridel Le Sueur was born in Murray, Iowa, on February 22, 1900, to William Winston Wharton and Marian âÂÂMary Delâ Lucy, both of whom were involved in social and political reform movements that often required the family to relocate. Following MarianâÂÂs divorce from MeridelâÂÂs biological father, she married Arthur Le Sueur, an influential socialist lawyer and ex-Socialist mayor of Minot, North Dakota. Arthur was instrumental in the Non-Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor Party. Marian Le Sueur continued her activism as a socialist, feminist, and a delegate for the WomenâÂÂs Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Her grandfather was a supporter of the Protestant fundamentalist temperance movement, and she "grew up among the radical farmer and labor groups ... like the Populists, the Farmers' Alliance and the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World." Le Sueur was heavily influenced by poems and stories that she heard from Native American women.
Starting in her late teens, Le Sueur began writing for liberal and left-leaning newspapers, addressing issues such as unemployment, migrant labor, and Native American autonomy. Her early journalism reflected both her political awareness and her interest in the everyday struggles of working people, themes that would remain central throughout her career.
In the years following high school, Le Sueur continued exploring artistic and political worlds beyond the Midwest. "After a year studying dance and physical fitness at the American College of Physical Education in Chicago, Illinois, Meridel moved to New York City, where she lived in an anarchist commune with Emma Goldman and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts." Her acting career primarily took place in California, where she worked in Hollywood as an extra in The Perils of Pauline and Last of the Mohicans, and as a stuntwoman in silent movies. Although she would not continue acting, it expanded her interest in the telling of stories and creative work.
By the mid-1920s, she began writing for liberal and left-leaning newspapers on topics such as unemployment, migrant labor, and rights of Native Americans. It was during this period that she also joined the Communist Party, reflecting a deepening alignment with working-class politics. Sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, Le Sueur returned to the Midwest and settled in Minnesota. She was a contributor to New Masses and The Daily Worker. Her pieces focused on labor, poverty, and the everyday struggles of working people. These articles marked the beginning of her writing career. Her early journalism combined firsthand political involvement with a storytelling style shaped by her activist upbringing, establishing her as an emerging voice in Depression-era writing.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she taught writing classes in her mother's home on Dupont Avenue near Douglas Avenue in Minneapolis. She was something of a magnet for aspiring writers, drawing students from as far as New York City. She lived in the Twin Cities for some time.
Le Sueur wrote many notable books throughout her life. Le Suer gained recognition during the 1930s. On May 24, 1936, when New York Times editor Edward OâÂÂBrienâÂÂs published his yearly collection of best short stories, he included sixteen of Le Sueur's published short stories as either a citation or as a reprint. Her essay "I Was Marching" was reprinted three times. Her book Salute to Spring was shown in the International Publishers imprint during the 1940s, which included twelve pieces of both fiction and journalism. She also wrote several popular children's books, including the biographies, Nancy Hanks of Wilderness Road, The Story of Davy Crockett, and The Story of Johnny Appleseed, and Sparrow Hawk. A Story of Abraham Lincoln's Mother, one of her earliest children's books, was published in 1949. Composed of poetry, it focused on the dull life of a young girl named Billie Jo through the bleakness of Oklahoma in the 1930s. Because her communist political views shaped much of her literary work, the Cold War climate and its repression of radical writers forced Le Suer to withdraw from public life and take her work underground by shutting down many of her publishing outlets. It wasnâÂÂt until the end of the 1960s that her work became more visible again due to a better political climate and the start of the new womenâÂÂs movement. A few pieces of her work were reissued in the 1970s under the title Corn Village.
Women on the Breadlines was Le SueurâÂÂs first piece written for New Masses in 1932. The piece documents the realities of the nearly three million women who were unemployed during the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, there were long lines of people waiting for free food, known as breadlines. Le Sueur had observed that underprivileged women typically avoided these lines in order to protect their image and hide their poverty. They avoided the breadlines by pooling together their resources, selling their possessions and/or their bodies, and/or applying for relief, which was seen as humiliating for many during this time. ÃÂ
Le SueurâÂÂs writing style outlines the economic and psychological effects of their situation. She includes distinctive images such as women surviving on bacon rinds and potato peelings, or a very tired woman described in the conclusion of the story, whose body shows signs of a significantly laborious life. The editors of New Masses criticized "Women on the Breadlines," describing it as having a defeatist tone. Editors urged her to depict more revolutionary and opportunistic events that were offered by unemployment councils. Despite this criticism, Le Sueur continued to view her portrayal of suffering not as pessimism, but as solidarity. "Woman on the Breadlines" has since been widely accepted as an early example of Le SueurâÂÂs political devotion to giving voices to the struggling working-class women.
One of her best known books, the novel The Girl, was first written in 1939 but not published until 1978. When Le Suer had first brought the book to a publisher in 1939, they turned it down. Her book was then left in her daughterâÂÂs basement in Saint Paul until the West End Press publishing house published it. On June 8th, 1934, Le Sueur wrote in her journal about a meeting that had sparked her to write The Girl. The meeting was on the issue of eugenic sterilization, which showcased to her how class status affected the livelihood of a woman. She had encountered this issue during 1925 when a law was passed in Minnesota that made people get sterilized if they were faced with mental disabilities, even when the tests determining their mental status were not always accurate. People who were recognized as feeble-minded would then get placed under legal guardianship. Her stepfather was a lawyer and he defended those who were wrongfully labeled and tried to overturn the decisions through court.
Le Sueur based The Girl on stories from the women in the Workers Alliance organization. This book showcased the fight for reproductive rights for working-class women by arguing against eugenics. In one section, she compares women to a mimeograph, since eugenics spreads the idea that women are mindless individuals who are creating replicas of themselves. She exposes how society usually targets the women who are sexually active and socially underrepresented, and ultimately challenges the idea that eugenics promotes social welfare.
Following the end of World War II, the political climate of the United States saw an increase in blacklisting because of the hysteria surrounding the perceived threat of communism in the United States. Le Sueur joined the Communist Party in 1924. The Communist party âÂÂprovided a political theory and a program of action to which she could commit herself while at the same time retaining the freedom to be critical.â Elaine Hedges, the editor of Le Sueur's collection of work Ripening, says that Le Sueur âÂÂwas aware herself of the male orientation of the party.â While Le Sueur criticized the Communist party for its dismissal of womenâÂÂs rights, but the âÂÂcommunal solidarityâ was still a cornerstone of Le SueurâÂÂs work.
Le Sueur was one of the writers blacklisted during the 1950s. This forced Le Sueur to go âÂÂundergroundâ with her work as she was cut off from publishing outlets. During this period, she had to published childrenâÂÂs books about American historical figures to sustain an income during a time when her political works prevented her work from being picked up by any outlets. Towards the end of the 1950s, she supplemented her income with various occupations, such as working in garment sweatshops and as a driver. At one point during Le SueurâÂÂs blacklisting, she lived in a condemned bus in Santa Fe, California. The blacklisting of Le Sueur also delayed the publication of her novel, The Girl, in which one character was a Communist party organizer.
Le Sueur has become a major figure in feminist literary studies, labor history, and American cultural scholarship. According to a literary scholar, Constance Coiner, Le Sueur's work plays a major role in Marxist feminist literature because Le Sueur centered class struggle, women in labor, and left-wing politics. Le Sueur's work, especially her novel The Girl (1939), has also received attention in contemporary feminist scholarship. Jolene Hubbs argues that the novelâÂÂs representation of class inequality, control over womenâÂÂs bodies, as well as reproductive injustice anticipate later intersectional feminist analyses of structural oppression. Because of these themes, The Girl is often included in womenâÂÂs studies and American literature as an early example of feminist social critique.
Le SueurâÂÂs reputation continued expanding during late 20th century. In 1982, The Feminist Press reissued her work, Ripening: Selected Work 1927-1980. The collection's editor, Elaine Hedges, wrote that Le SueurâÂÂs work documented womenâÂÂs daily lives and labor activism. This contributed to a new interest in her work during the second wave of feminist movement.
Le Sueur has also received recognition for her contribution to American literary regionalism. Literary scholar Stephen Schleuning described Le Sueur as playing a major role in "new regionalism" that centered on working-class communities, gendered experiences, and the political culture of the Midwest, an interpretation that led to critical discussions of regional writing and proletarian literature.
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