You are now entering the Jewish Currents archive.
December 11: Grace Paley
Fiction writer, poet, and social activist Grace Paley was born in the Bronx on this date in 1922. Her short stories (in three collections, including Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, 1974), poetry and essays have been translated into 92 languages around the world. Paley’s own language is infused with Yiddish cadences, and her best characters lead with a witty feminist sensibility. Most often Paley wrote in the first person, creating storytelling women who cope with life’s and love’s challenges with wisdom and frankness. She herself was deeply involved in anti-war and anti-nuclear campaigns before, during and after the Vietnam War, and cofounded the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the [Israeli] Occupation in 1987. The year before, she was awarded a PEN/Faulkner Prize for fiction and also named the first State Author of New York. Paley died in 2007. A documentary film by Lilly Rivlin, Grace Paley: Collected Shorts, premiered at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in 2010.
“Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.” —Grace Paley
I’m Arielle Angel, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents. Before you go, there’s something I need to ask.
We’ve seen over and over how the mainstream media falters in telling stories on our beats—whether it’s antisemitism, Israel/Palestine in American politics, Jewish identity, or the American left. At Jewish Currents we’re committed to uncompromising analysis and longform reporting on these issues and more—stories you won’t find anywhere else. In a media landscape that obscures injustice and flattens discussion, we’re changing the conversation. But we need you.
If you believe in this work, please consider making a donation—or even better, a recurring one—to ensure that we are able to keep publishing stories like this one. We can’t do it without you.
