Conversations with Grace Paley

the long version

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.