A Conversation with My Father

by Grace Paley

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A Conversation with My Father: Storytelling and Feminism


Lidoff was an American educator and critic who wrote extensively on women writers. The interview excerpted below is a composite of private conversations and classroom discussions held while Paley visited the University of Texas in 1981. In the excerpted portion of the interview, Paley discusses storytelling, "A Conversation with My Father," and her feelings regarding feminism.

[Lidoff]: At your reading last night, you said that all story tellers are story hearers. Would you tell us some more about that?

[Paley]: If you're a person who doesn't pay attention, and who isn't listening, you won't be a writer, you won't even be a story teller. Those of you who are writers from the very beginning of your lives were probably unusually attentive children. You heard things that the other kids on the block really weren't listening to. You may not have known it; you didn't go around when you were six years old saying "Oh, what l heard today!" but you...

(The entire page is 1411 words.)

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