Grace Paley
Grace Paley was an influential American writer and activist, known for her poignant short stories that capture the nuances of daily life, particularly within her New York City community. Born Grace Goodside in the Bronx to Ukrainian Jewish immigrant parents, Paley grew up in a politically engaged household that fostered her appreciation for literature and social discourse. She initially pursued poetry but found her true voice in short stories, publishing notable collections such as "The Little Disturbances of Man" and "Later the Same Day."
Paley's work often highlighted women's experiences and the importance of community, drawing inspiration from her interactions with neighbors and local events. Her activism flourished alongside her writing, particularly during the 1960s when she became involved in peace movements, feminism, and anti-war efforts. Throughout her life, she held various teaching positions and was recognized with numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award.
Paley's legacy lies in her ability to articulate the stories of overlooked lives, particularly those of women, and her belief in the power of individual and collective action for social change. She passed away at the age of eighty-four, leaving behind a rich body of work that continues to resonate with readers and activists alike.
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Subject Terms
Grace Paley
Writer, activist, and feminist
- Born: December 11, 1922
- Birthplace: Bronx, New York
- Died: August 22, 2007
- Place of death: Thetford Hill, Vermont
Paley advanced the art of fiction by giving voice to marginalized women through the depiction of everyday activities. Focusing on voice and language more than plot, she captured the patterns of speech and the drama of daily life while expanding the form and function of the short story.
Early Life
Grace Paley (PAY-lee), also known as Grace Goodside, was the daughter of Isaac Gutseit and Manya Ridnyik, who came to the United States in 1906 from Ukraine when they were twenty-one. Both had been exiled by Czar Nicolas II for their political, socialist activities. After receiving amnesty and seeing Isaac’s brother killed in a workers’ demonstration in 1905, they decided to emigrate to were chosen, where Gutseit Americanized the name to Goodside. The year they arrived, they had a son and, in two more years, a daughter. Isaac’s mother and two sisters soon joined the household. The whole family worked hard, and in two years Isaac began medical school. After graduating, he established a practice in the Bronx, where Paley was born, fourteen years after the younger sibling.
By the time of her birth, the family’s circumstances were much improved. Paley was adored by her parents and extended family, and she enjoyed more personal freedom than had her older siblings. She grew up a tomboy, hanging out with the boys on the corner. Family life was comfortable even during the Great Depression, and their home was filled with visitors. Neighbors came on Friday nights to listen to music on her father’s Victrola. Immigrant friends and relatives often stayed for extended periods of time while establishing their way in the United States. Paley’s family maintained their socialist inclinations. Talk of politics and personal stories drew adults and children around the family dining table, where everyone contributed to the conversation. While Isaac became an atheist, his mother practiced the Jewish religion, and Paley grew up appreciating her Jewish heritage.
As a young girl she was an excellent student, but she lost interest in all but literature as she grew older. She married Jesse Paley, also of a Jewish immigrant family, when she was nineteen. He was stationed in the Pacific during World War II. After he returned, he worked as freelance photographer, and for most of their married life, they struggled to pay the rent.
Life’s Work
After starting college and then deciding she would not pursue a degree, Paley enrolled in a poetry course taught by W. H. Auden at the New School for Social Research. She showed him her poetry and followed his advice to use words from her own life. She began writing poetry, but, by her thirties, she found that the short story provided more opportunity for her particular talent with language. A social person, she was always interested in being where the action was. The action for young mothers was in the park, talking while their children were playing. Paley called this participation in local gossip maintaining the oral tradition. These conversations and the neighborhood activities became the inspiration for her stories. Her three collections of short stories, The Little Disturbances of Man: Women and Men at Love (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day (1985), all later published as Collected Stories (1994), represent her best work.
Paley’s life and work became an intricate interweaving of family, community life, and art. As she worked in and for the community, her social activism grew. Community interests came to encompass the whole country and government policy. Her politics first centered on what she identified as women’s concerns—peace, family, and community life—and then became more global, particularly in response to the Vietnam War. During the 1960’s, she founded the Greenwich Village Peace Center. By the mid-1960’s, she had also become a feminist.
In 1965, she began teaching writing at Columbia University. As she became more active politically and more connected with feminist viewpoints, she and her husband grew apart, divorcing in 1967. In 1972, she married Bob Nichols, a landscape architect and writer, who shared her commitment to social and political action. In the next decades, she traveled to Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Central America, and the Middle East, representing various organizations and promoting peace. She described these and other experiences in a collection of essays, Just as I Thought, published in 1998.
Throughout years of political activism, Paley wrote stories that captured, with humor, irony, and linguistic invention, the expressions and circumstances of the diverse mix of her New York City neighborhood. Her intention in them was to present the voice and sensibility of the people she encountered. She also became a valued mentor and teacher in both formal and informal situations. While she taught at various places, she spent the last two decades of her life teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in Vermont. She won many awards for her work, including the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction in 1985. She was honored as the first winner of the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit and as the first New York State Author in 1986. Paley died of breast cancer at the age of eighty-four.
Significance
Paley demonstrated in her life and in her stories the significance of daily life. From her youth, she experienced the value of speaking out and of working for community. Adept at listening to, observing, and capturing artistically the people around her, she created stories that gave voice to to lives theretofore unheard. She described her work as restorative and compared herself to a regional artist, asserting that she restored to the culture the overlooked lives of people in her ethnic New York neighborhood. Usually these were women absorbed in the concerns of daily life—relationships, children, community preservation. To reflect these lives artistically, she adapted and expanded the short story, the genre most suited to her snapshots of life. Focusing more on voice than on plot and creating a plot resolution that accommodated change, she reinvented, to some extent, the short-story form, enabling it to provide for her characters the freedom to hope and to change. She was a community activist who saw that sometimes individuals and groups can effect change, an optimistic view that she promotes in her work.
Bibliography
Arcana, Judy. Grace Paley’s Life Stories: A Literary Biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. A close look at Paley’s life and art, based on years of interviews with Paley and her family, friends, and colleagues, and a close analysis of her work.
Harrell Clark, La Verne. “A Matter of Voice: Grace Paley and the Oral Tradition.” Women and Language 23, no. 1 (2000): 18. An exploration of narrative technique in Paley’s fiction.
Isaacs, Neil D. Grace Paley: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1990. A thorough study of Paley’s fiction, including responses of critics and Paley’s own assessment of her goals and techniques.
Ruben, Rachel. “Tender Impiety: Grace Paley 1922-2007.” The Women’s Review of Books 26, no. 3 (May/June, 2008): 30. This obituary reflects on the personality and character of Paley and provides an overview of her writing, social activism, teaching, and mentoring.
Taylor, Jacqueline. Grace Paley: Illuminating the Dark Lives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. Close analysis of Paley’s artistic technique, especially the ways she captures voice through invention, dialogue, and point of view.