From the class Orientation · Learning Portfolio post, August 19, 2019
In the essay titled “Travelling” by Grace Paley, she instantly identifies herself as a stranger while accounting her event in 1943 on the bus. She is traveling from the safety of her familiar New York towards the south where she knows nobody but her husband. She even claims she is forgetting what he looks like since they have been apart for so long, in a way making them strangers to each other too. On her ride, there is a woman of color standing, holding a baby and she seems very tired. Grace offers her seat but the woman kindly declines, knowing it could and would get her in trouble. Grace, fully aware of this fact also then offers to hold the baby which the woman totally succumbs to. When a man on the bus sees this inter-race exchange he makes a vulgar comment towards Grace and the child. Grace does not let this comment change anything, however. She stays firmly planted in her community of humanity and continues holding the baby and assisting the mother.
Originally posted on my Parsons Learning Portfolio.