Reflection of ‘Travelling’ by Grace Paley

The community means the environment which we live in and have been affected by in a long term. In the remembrance of  Grace Paley, she wrote stories of two rides on the buses in the Southern part of the nation. In the first story taking place in 1927 when racial segregation still happened on the buses where the black were forced by the law to sit in the back. As a stranger to the southern community, the author’s mother claimed her adamant stance in not moving from the back seat to the front, differing from the other white who knew where to sit. Her mother’s experience, in a indirect way, defines the community where the author and her family lived and immersed them into the injustices of the segregation. This also influences the author’s way of dealing with racial injustices as she offered help to the colored woman holding a sleeping baby, even though she was never told by her sister and mother about their pervious experience of the ride. Nevertheless, the community which she belongs to would motivate her nature of making a different decision from the rest on the bus.