susanstinson

I just heard, through

beccawrites, that fiction writer and activist Grace Paley has died.

The last time I saw Grace Paley, at the end of June, my friend Paul Lisicky introduced me to her. She took my hand. We'd met before, and she didn't remember me. I didn't expect her to. She was reading with Paul's partner, Mark Doty, and, inspired by his good, fierce reading, she read more poems than she had planned to read. She said, "Sometimes, you just have to do what you feel like doing." Then she read a story with the last page missing. I ran into someone later who complained about that, and also complained that they had heard that she sometimes chewed gum while she read (yeah, so?), but I didn't care, said so, and declared my love.

Grace Paley is a writer I'll always love.

I first read her stories in the library at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the early eighties. I wasn't happy with my living situation, and haunted that library, and her work made me feel so excited. The fact that she wrote about the lives of ordinary women in language that just crackled with humor and life helped me see that this was possible.

When I moved east, and did a little civil disobedience around nuclear disarmament, I heard her read about her activism, about getting arrested -- again, in stories that brought me joy in terms of craft, made me shiver with strength of voice, and talked about serious things that I could barely get my mind around, as if casually, as if political engagement really was a part of life that a person didn't back away from, but didn't get all rhetorical or posturing or dishonest about. I loved that she gave readings wearing clothes that were anything but intimidating.

On top of everything else, she always struck me as a beauty. There is a photo of her, white hair pinned to the top of her head, barefoot with her white, dimpled legs bare, standing in a stream holding her flowered dress above her knees, looking gorgeous, happy and so present.

I got to read with her once in Vermont at the Institute for Social Ecology. I told the story here. I read a piece from a novel that was wrapped around a Yeats poem, after she said how great it was to hear all that Yeats (which was like hearing that she shared my love for a favorite band), she told the audience that they should not be confused about whether my story about a fat woman was political, because it was. I got confused about that, myself, sometimes, so that was good to hear. Also, even though, so many years later, she didn't remember me, I got to watch her that night staring at the cover of my book -- this was Martha Moody -- trying to remember it.

Once, when she read at the Unitarian Church in Northampton, she was behind an elevated pulpit. She said that it felt strange to be so high above everybody else. "It's great!" shouted someone. "But do you think it's right?" said Grace.

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