Remembering Grace Paley

by Lee Conell

We all know about the myth of the writer: He (it’s usually a he in the myth) is a recluse, sitting in his cabin in the woods, contemplating this and that, avoiding other human beings even as he seeks to emulate their problems in prose.

Then there’s Grace Paley.

When the New York writer and activist died on August 24 at the age of 84, the obituaries didn’t just appear in major mainstream publications – The New York Times, The Washington Post – but on websites devoted to feminism, to anarchism, to nonviolent activism. The legacy Paley leaves is not just found between the pages of her books, but in her commitment to being actively involved in major issues in the world today.

Sometimes this involvement showed its face in small, local ways: Every Saturday for years during the ’60s, Paley stood on a street corner near her home in New York City, handing out protest fliers to the passerby.

But Paley’s activism took her out of her neighborhood too. It brought her to Hanoi on a peace mission, and to Moscow for a world peace conference. It took her to Washington D.C., where she was among the “White House Eleven” arrested in 1978 for unfurling an anti-nuclear banner on the White House lawn.

The strong female voice in her short stories parallels Paley’s own actions and role as a feminist. In 1972 she signed a petition in Ms. Magazine for women who had abortions in a pre-Roe v. Wade world. She added her name to a similar petition in 2006, the year before she died, as a woman’s right to a safe abortion again came under fire in South Dakota.

Paley did not publish frequently, but the stories she wrote forged her reputation as one of the leading American short story writers of the 20th century. The stories, like Paley herself, often engaged the world and questioned it, too. In the story “An Interest in Life,” the main character Virginia, whose husband has disappeared and left her with four children, decides to go on the gameshow “Strike it Rich.” When her neighbor’s son John finds out about her plan, he is scornful. The people who go on that show, he says, truly “suffer” in ways Virginia can’t understand. Paley revealed that the difficulties women faced were frequently and patronizingly dismissed as nothing more than “little disturbances” in life. Just as Paley handed out fliers to inform, she used her writing to shine a light on these difficulties.

When asked during a 1998 interview with Salon.com if writers have a moral obligation, Paley replied that all human beings do. “So if all human beings have it,” she added, “then writers have some, too. I mean, why should they get off the hook? Whatever your calling is, whether it’s as a plumber or an artist, you have to make sure there’s a little more justice in the world when you leave it than when you found it.”

Through her words, which remain alive and active, Paley will continue to contribute justice to the world. Her unique voice illuminates the lives of women working to maintain their own voices under duress. It is this illumination, as well as Paley’s fearlessness in engaging the world, that guarantees her importance both as a feminist and as a writer.

Lee Connell spends her time drinking coffee, scribbling, and studying literature at SUNY New Paltz.