I can't see me writing an autobiography. I mean it seems so stupid. [Laughter.] You have to feel like you are telling the world something. I feel I'm… - Grace Paley

The woman on the other phone is young and in tears. She's saying, "Mom. Ma, please, it's my world they're gonna blow up." Then some silence. Then: "Ma, please, I have to do it. It's not terrible to get arrested. I'm all right, Ma, please listen, you got married and had us and everything and a house, but they still kept making nuclear bombs." More tears. "Listen, listen please, Ma." I wanted to take the phone from her and say, "Ma, don't worry, your kid's okay. She's great. Don't you see she's one of the young women who will save my granddaughter's life?"

For me, somehow, the short story is very close to the poem in feeling and not so close in feeling to the novel, although it’s about the same people that a novel would be about.

You know in my lifetime, Jews have been very close to Blacks, really have had very close relations, and I just happen to be reading this book When and Where I Enter (by Paula Giddings).