Just As I Thought.When I was a college student, I came across this refreshing bit in the literary magazine TriQuarterly: "One of the things that art is about, for me, is justice. Now, that isn't a matter of opinion, really. That isn't to say, `I'm going to show these people right or wrong' or whatever. But what art is about--and this is what justice is about, although you'll have your own interpretations--is the illumination of what isn't known, the lighting up of what is under a rock, of what has been hidden." The author of this passage is Grace Paley Grace Paley (December 11 1922 – August 22 2007) was an American short story writer, poet, and political activist whose work won a number of awards. Biography Born as Grace Goodside . At the time, I already loved Paley's short stories for their humor humor, according to ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that determined man's health and temperament. Hippocrates postulated that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) resulted in pain and disease, and that good health was , their perceptiveness per·cep·tive adj. 1. Of or relating to perception: perceptive faculties. 2. a. Having the ability to perceive; keen in discernment. b. about women's lives, and their attention to the way people actually speak. But the paragraph that appeared in TriQuarterly seemed to uncover an intimate connection between writing about life and living it. Twelve years later, reading Paley's book of essays, Just As I Thought (Farrar, Straus & Giroux Farrar, Straus & Giroux Publishing company in New York City noted for its literary excellence. It was founded in 1945 by John Farrar and Roger Straus as Farrar, Straus & Co. , 1998), I came upon the same paragraph and had a second experience of recognition. Paley is a wonderful writer and, from all indications, gifted at living as well. The four decades of essays in this book consider her childhood as a young Jewish socialist in the Bronx, her decades in the peace and women's movements women's movement: see feminism; woman suffrage. women's movement Diverse social movement, largely based in the U.S., seeking equal rights and opportunities for women in their economic activities, personal lives, and politics. her experiences with the trauma of abortion 1940s, her thoughts on teaching and her evaluations of other writers. She tells all this with wry wit ("Because I believe in the oral tradition in literature, I have been opposed to cookbooks The following is a list of cookbooks, sorted alphabetically by author's surname. This is not a list of external links to commercial sites; please list only cookbooks here. This literature-related list is incomplete; you can help by [ expanding it]. "), little cant, and a great deal of sturdy advice ("that's the real meaning of nonviolent civil disobedience--to be utterly and absolutely stubborn stubborn Vox populi → medtalk Refractory; unresponsive to therapy "). Paley recognizes the moral responsibilities of all people, including creative writers: "The word `imagination,' as we're given it from childhood on, is really about imagining fantasy. We say, `Oh, that kid has some imagination, you know. Some smart kid; that kid imagined all these devils and goblins and so forth.' But ... the possibility is that what we need right now is to imagine the real." Anne-Marie Cusac is Managing Editor of The Progressive. |
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