Sunday, December 18, 2022

Grace Paley - 346 / 365 of reading one short story every day.



American writer Grace Paley was a short story writer, poet activist and a feminist.

Her first published collection of stories were The Little Disturbances of Man, in 1959, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, her second collection in 1974 and many more.



The Little Disturbances of Man

The stories have humour yet also with humanity.

The story, The Used-Boy Raisers, is about a single mother raising boys and the sense of ease and humour she expresses instead of lamenting about her situation.

In another story, an unsuccessful Yiddish actor likes to keep a mistress on the side. Most stories deal with unlikely couples - old men with young girls, a handyman falling for a teenage girl etc

A female reader reviews the stories as - ‘As a female reader, I have to take pride in a woman writer not committed to the idea that men who refuse to fall in with women’s plans are necessarily childish or unhinged. A few stories are amusingly written from the point of view of resistant and self-protecting males.’


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