Conversations with Grace Paley

by Gerhard Bach (Editor), Blaine Hall (Editor), Blaine H. Hall (Editor)

Overview

Grace Paley's contribution to American literature, while comparatively small in volume, has been substantial in impact. With a voice very much her own, Paley has been a critical force in post-World War II American culture, particularly at its controversial centers. With The Little Disturbances of Man, Later the Same Day, and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute Paley attracted a significant and admiring following.

In this collection of interviews from 1978 to 1995 Paley elaborates on the many forces that have influenced her and her writing. In these conversations she reveals not only her triple lives as writer, mother, and political activist but also her perspectives which over the years have become precise and solid. With authority, distinctness, and relentless honesty she speaks out on contemporary issues. She discusses American conditions at large, particularly those that are being neglected or denied.

With firm authority Paley discusses topics of wide range, many of which she describes as personal discoveries. She includes politics and environmentalism, the family and human relationships, the impact of background and education, the moral importance of community, feminism and women's liberation, the sexual self and role enforcement, America's need for communality and women's creative response to it, the art of teaching, and the importance of friendship.

Paley's conversations, like her writings, are refreshingly candid and radically different from the contemporary American mainstream.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617036958
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Series:	Literary Conversations Series
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Gerhard Bach is a professor of English at Bremen University, Germany, and an adjunct professor of American Studies at Brigham Young University.


Blaine Hall is a former English Language and Literature Librarian at Brigham Young University.

Read an Excerpt

Barry Silesky: What do you think about the contemporary state of feminism? One of my colleagues at work, a woman from Italy who teaches mathematics, said when the word came up, "I'm not a feminist." She made an effort to disassociate herself from that. And I was struck by that. Here's a woman who is single, and heavily engaged in a professional career, and it seemed to me she's only able to be where she is, in large part, because of the women's movement.

Grace Paley: Here again, I think it's an American effort, despite her being European, to refuse the politics of history and thehistory of politics-the way in which their own lives are influenced by political currents. They say, "I'm not part of this wave, it has nothing to do with me," and I think it's painful. It's terrible when it's with older people because they really should know better. But with the kids,it's understandable because kids don't have a strong sense of history.