ON
OUR RADAR:
What's in a Name?...
It
is said that we often grow into our names... Move aside Gracie Allen
and Grace Kelly: meet
Grace Paley.
Born
as Grace Goodside in the Bronx, Paley's Jewish parents, Isaac and
Manya Ridnyik Goodside, had Anglicized the family name from Gutseit
on immigrating from Ukraine. The family spoke Russian and Yiddish
along with English. The youngest of the three Goodside children, Paley
was a tomboy as a child, allowing her to investigate the conflicts
and struggles of her immigrant neighborhood; these issues would later
form the raw material for much of her fiction.
Simultaneous
with Paley's burgeoning fiction career, she began what would become
a life-long commitment to political activism, particularly anti-militarization
efforts. In the 1950s, Paley joined friends in protesting nuclear
proliferation and American militarization; she also worked with the
American Friends Service Committee to establish neighborhood peace
groups, through which she met her husband, cinematographer Robert
Nichols.
With
the escalation of the Vietnam War, Paley's activism reached a new
level. She joined the War Resisters League and came to national prominence
as an activist when she accompanied a 1969 peace mission to Hanoi
to negotiate the release of prisoners of war. She also served as a
delegate to the 1974 World Peace Conference in Moscow and in 1978,
was arrested as one of "The White House Eleven" for unfurling
an anti-nuclear banner (that read "No Nuclear Weapons -- No Nuclear
Power -- USA and USSR") on the White House lawn.
In
her later years and with decreased mobility, Paley would often stand
quietly--and gracefully--on a streetcorner in Greenwhich Village,
New York, smiling at people passing by and handing out pro-peace leaflets.
She
died at home in Thetford, Vermont, on August 22, 2007, following a
battle with breast cancer, aged 84.
from
Wikipedia
