Traveling:

Traveling is a sweet story about a white, Jewish girl who recalls two times where her family went against the social constructs and “helped” or rather silently stood up for black people when the buses were segregated.

It’s important that the author, Grace Paley, keeps emphasizing the fact that she’s Jewish. She does this to almost remind the reader that she has obviously once felt as though she doesn’t belong or is different from most people. This is why it was so important to her to help the black mother and why she thinks her mother was so right and graceful when she refused to move closer to the front of the bus. Palsy believes that both herself and the black mother have felt difference and pain, and that is also why she emphasized that she can’t imagine someone who has felt the shared difference, be mean to a black person. She mentions the Jewish boy who when he encountered a black person had hit him.

Some Notes on Teaching:

A teacher reflects, or rather writes down 15 assignments that she frequently gives her class year to year. It’s interesting to see what Paley writes, because by following her train of thought, the reader notices that even though she (or the character she is writing as) is the teacher and supposed to be teaching the students, by doing the same assignments as the students, she is still able to learn about herself and about life.