We’re back into a new semester at Lang, and in conjunction with the New School’s Experience+Meaning orientation project, we’re reading Grace Paley’s “Travelling” this week in my First-Year Writing class, The Faith Between Us. Paley’s essay recounts two bus-trips, about fifteen years apart, and Paley’s own memories of those travels. In the first, which takes place in 1927, Paley’s mother simply and firmly says “No,” when she’s told to move from the back section of the bus to the front. “It’s against the law. You have to move to the front,” says the driver. He’s met with refusal.

Paley herself rides the bus in the second account, and confronted with the same intractable problem, offers to hold the child of a black woman to give her some relief after the woman refuses to exchange places. “Of course,” Paley writes, “she couldn’t accept my seat.”

Alongside this piece, the class is also reading another short essay by Paley, “Some Notes on Teaching, Probably Spoken,” where we find this bit of wisdom: “There’s probably a natural grammar at the tip of your tongue. You may not believe it, but if you say what’s on your mind in the language that comes to you from your parents and your street and friends, you’ll probably say something beautiful.” Last spring I used this moment from the piece as the basis for an essay of my own, “Something More Than Correctness,” which helped to announce the Grace Paley Teaching Fellowship, whose inaugural recipient is Diana Goetsch.