Requiescat in Pace, Grace Paley

One of my favorite writers--a slim and lovely output.

I taught "The Loudest Voice" when I was at U.Va.: an interesting experience, b/c I understood the mother who didn't want Shirley to be in the Christmas pageant; my students thought she was bigoted and preferred the father. I also hadn't realized just how specific her frame of reference was, I suppose b/c I was born and marinated in it.

The NYT obituary was very good and quoted from most of my favorite stories, including the wonderful beginning of "The Loudest Voice"--

There is a certain place where dumb-waiters boom, doors slam, dishes crash;
every window is a mother’s mouth bidding the street shut up, go skate
somewhere else, come home. My voice is the loudest.

There, my own mother is still as full of breathing as me and the grocer
stands up to speak to her.

--which I thought of often after my mother died. The one I regret not having taught is--can't remember the title--it's a couple that breaks up when he criticizes her parenting, and her son, approximately four years old or so, sticks his hand in front of her eyes, and as she's looking through his fingers which form bars across her eyes, her "heart light[s] up in stripes." I'm surprised that I got that as well as I did in my long-ago innocent days of singlehood.