Paris Review Interview: Grace Paley

I've been reading Grace Paley's Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and have been enjoying it very much. Good, succinct writing that draws you in. She also represents a type of woman that perhaps is dying out in America. These are women (I could include the men too) who were born in the early part of the last century, 1910 to 1930, to Eastern European Jewish parents.

When these people immigrated, many of them brought their notions of socialism and idealism of the collective good to this country. Well-timed when considering the looming depression, New Deal transformation of American culture around the social contract, World War II, and then the Civil Rights Movement and Feminism.

People like Paley, the children of these immigrants, understood the need for and the reasons behind the call for social justice.

And though Paley's writing could be said to be political, it doesn't read as a strident rant on the state of American culture and politics. Instead, her short stories are small, prescient examinations of what it means to live in America, especially in urban America.

There is a wonderful interview from 1992 in the Paris Review here: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2028/the-art-of-fiction-no-131-grace-paley. Well worth reading.