Grace Paley was a short story writer of Russian-American descent. Writing at the beginning of the 20th century, her work drew vivid portraits of the life around her neighborhood in the Bronx area of New York. Though her short story collections only numbered three, she is remembered as one of the greatest short story writers of American literature. Writing in America magazine, William Novak referred to Paley as “a writer’s writer” who “focuses her talent and energy on the craft itself.”

What is more remarkable about Paley is that she spent much of her writing years focusing on her two children to her first husband and her work as an activist.

As The Poetry Foundation is keen to point out, writing had only occasionally been Paley’s main occupation. She had spent a lot of time in playgrounds with her children and around other mothers. This mothering time fed into her stories, which are rich in the nuances of dialogue and thematic references to mothers, errant husbands and the ordinary lives of working-class New Yorkers.

Paley was also very active in both the feminist and peace movements. She travelled overseas as part of the anti-Vietnam protests. Nonetheless, she chose not to write about this work, other than in political pamphlets. She said:

“I think I could have done more for peace, if I’d written about the war, but I happen to love being in the streets.”

Writing about Paley in the New Yorker, Alexandra Schwartz referred to Paley as:

“First and foremost an antinuclear, antiwar, antiracist feminist activist who managed, in her spare time, to become one of the truly original voices of American fiction in the later twentieth century.”

The Life and Work of Grace Paley

Born Grace Goodside in 1922 to Russian-American immigrants, who had arrived in New York at the beginning of the 20th century. She was raised in the Bronx, an experience that would go on to heavily influence her writing. The young Grace’s parents spoke Russian and Yiddish at home. Like many children in her neighborhood, she grew up sandwiched between the two cultures.

Paley’s beginnings were humble, as was her education. She dropped out of high school at 16. Then she attended Hunter College for only a year before marriage. Her first husband was a film cameraman named Jesse Paley. Married at the age of nineteen in 1942, Grace and Jess had two children together, Nora and Danny. The couple later divorced.

Between 1942 and 1944, Jess served in the U.S. Army. This line of work meant that Grace lived in the army camps alongside many other wives of servicemen. It was during this time that she first became conscious of the ordinary lives of women and that they were of great importance. She also saw that they had been largely ignored in formal literature.

Paley began writing poetry, continuing after the end of the war when her two children were born. It was soon to short stories that she turned her attention. A key theme throughout Paley’s writing were the young mothers around her and their relationships with one another. She also wrote about their relationships with the men in their lives.

Paley’s first collection appeared in 1959 under the title, “The Little Disturbances of Man.” She claimed that the stories for this first collection were a result of “two small lucks.” The first being an illness she suffered that meant she couldn’t care for her children full-time. This holiday from mothering resulted in more time to write. The second stroke of luck was that an editor at Doubleday publishing house, who was an ex-husband of a friend, read three of her stories. He subsequently commissioned her to write some more.

Though it received critical acclaim, the initial sales were modest. She did, however, gain fans of her writing style, which was seen as ‘fresh and vigorous’ by The New Yorker. Some of Paley’s stories in the collection could be a little morose, but her voice portrays a lively and sometimes dark sense of humor in which to convey the everyday occurrences of city life. The collection opens with the story, “An Interest in Life,” which sees a woman who has been deserted by her husband and left to bring up her four children alone:

“My husband gave me a broom one Christmas. This wasn’t right. No one can tell me it was meant kindly.”

Paley’s stories hum with the dialects of her mid-20th century life in the Bronx. Her writing style is not plot-heavy but focused on character. She wrote with a fine ear for the Jewish, Black, Irish and Russian dialects that made up the rich tapestry of her neighborhood. The stories — some of which are more like fragments or vignettes — often lack an established structure. This style led to Paley’s work being considered Postmodern.

Paley also introduced a recurring character who went on to feature in her later stories. Faith Darwin starts out as a young mother raising her sons in New York. Throughout Paley’s story collections, we see Faith being let down in love and befriending the other young mothers in her neighborhood. Later Faith comes full circle as we see her as a middle-aged woman with grown sons. Paley portrays this journey best through her story, “The Long-Distance Runner.” We see a confused Faith running back through the streets of her life, trying to figure out her identity.

“One day, before or after forty-two, I became a long-distance runner.”

“The Long-Distance Runner” has been compared to Alan Sillitoe’s 1959 story, “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.” Both stories show the central protagonist trying to outrun their lives by taking up running as both an emotional and physical escape.

Many critics focused on Paley’s character of Faith, suggesting that she was an alter ego for Paley herself. Paley herself always denied this theory.

Following the relative success and reception of her first collection, Paley’s publishers encouraged her to write a novel. She gave this project a serious attempt, spending the next two years working on it. However, she gave it up, deciding instead to focus her writing time and energy on more short fiction.

Paley’s second collection eventually appeared in 1974, “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.” In the interim, she had been heavily involved in both her mothering life and political activities.

Distributing antiwar pamphlets and marching on the Capitol, she had also travelled overseas to protest American involvement in Vietnam.

Her final standalone collection, “Later the Same Day,” appeared in 1985. A later full collection of all of Paley’s stories appeared in 1994. She also wrote a little poetry, publishing several collections. These poems tend more toward political themes, and have not been so critically well-received. Paley herself discredited her poetry as “too literary” for some.

She spent a brief time teaching at several New York universities, including Columbia, Syracuse and City College of New York, where she was writer-in-residence. She then for 22 years taught at Sarah Lawrence’s Bronx campus. Though Jess and Grace Paley separated in the 1950s, they remained married until 1972, when Grace remarried. Her second husband, Robert Nichols, was an architect, poet and short story writer. He was also a fellow anti-Vietnam War activist.

Despite her success as a short story writer, Paley continued to travel to countries such as Russia, El Salvador and Nicaragua to protest and assist in various campaigns. She was often arrested for civil disobedience. Even in her old age, she was considered dangerous, unstable and suspected as a communist by the FBI. They continued to hold a file open on her for over 30 years. In reality her family were mostly anti-communist socialists.

At just five feet tall and with her wild, white hair, Paley continued to fight for others until her death in 2007 at the age of eighty-four.

Authors Like Grace Paley

• Tillie Olsen
• Lucia Berlin
• Lorrie Moore
• Laurie Colwin
• Francine Prose