P aley, G race

Abstract

Revered as one of the most important and widely taught short story writers of the post‐World War II era, Grace Paley (1922–2007) published four volumes of short stories in her lifetime, as well as several volumes of poetry and non‐fiction; a fervent advocate for the causes of world peace and nuclear disarmament, Paley was equally well known as a political activist beginning with her involvement in the anti‐Vietnam War movement. Paley's stories are meticulously crafted portraits of the middle‐class inhabitants of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Greenwich Village, often focusing on the lives, trials, and conversations of women concerned about families, relationships, and an environment that poses various threats to human well‐being. The ironic tone, dialogism, and metafictional strategies to be found in many of Paley's stories are captured in the title of her first collection of stories, The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), as well as in the titles of the stories themselves: “In Time Which Made a Monkey of Us All,” a satire on adolescent inventiveness and human evolution; or “The Loudest Voice,” about a young girl with a loud voice who insists on her Jewish identity. Along with Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, and Bernard Malamud, Paley is considered as one of the leading architects of the contemporary short story.