PALEY, GRACE

PALEY, GRACE (1922– ), U.S. short story writer and poet as well as cultural and political figure. Born in the Bronx, N.Y., in 1922, daughter of revolutionary Russian Jewish immigrants,   Paley became Poet Laureate of Vermont, where she made her home. Her first collection of short stories, The Little Disturbances of Man: Stories of Women and Men at Love, was published in 1959. Other publications include Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), Later the same Day (1985), Long Walks and Intimate Talks (1991), The Collected Stories (1994), Just as I Thought (1998), and Begin Again: Collected Poems (2000). Most of her works have been translated into several languages. Among her many honors, Paley was a Guggenheim Fellow, winner of a National Institute of Art and Letters award, and senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts for her lifetime contribution to literature. A pacifist, feminist, ecologist, secular Jew, and member of the War Resisters' League, Paley was always politically active. Growing up on stories of discrimination, racism, and exile, in an environment of radicalism, she was sensitive to everyone's shortcomings: "Some feminists were sometimes racists, some African Americans were sometimes misogynist, some Jews did sometimes act as though they were in charge of human suffering." Differences of race, religion, class, gender, and age coexist in her narrative world, and human rights are the crucial question. The fear and inability to acknowledge these differences and accept anyone different from us can cause an "intersection of oppressions." Through her poetics and in her life Paley suggested the best way to find one's own identity was by expressing one's subjectivity while acknowledging differences and welcoming the "other." Paley also addressed the pain of the historical experiences of different groups – the Holocaust, slavery, dictatorships, and wars – with wit and irony. She described racism as "the most severe inherited illness of the United States." Her humor and her matter-of-factness were among her most Jewish characteristics, clearly evident in her use of a colloquial but precise language, rich in oblique biblical references. A gender perspective is at the core of Paley's work. Most of her stories are set in a New York populated by women friends, mothers, and their children, shouldering the day-to-day problems of life from the safety of the block. Mothers have also to face the most demanding job: negotiating their personal needs, being daughters themselves, and carrying out their roles as mothers caring for children. The complexity of her writing comes from mixing techniques, forms, and genres with a wide breadth of subjects. Paley shares with her narrators and characters a "dislike" for plot, "the absolute line between two points," "not for literary reasons," they explain, but because it limits hope: "Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Arcane, Grace Paley's Life Stories. A Literary Biography (1993); G. Bach and H.H. Blaine, Conversations with Grace Paley (1997); N. Batt, Grace Paley (1998); N. Isaac, Grace Paley. A Study of the Short Fiction (1990); J. Taylor, Grace Paley. Illuminating the Dark Lives (1990); Monographic Journals, in: Delta, 14 (1982) (Annalucia Accardo (2nd ed.)