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Tayari's Blog: Thank you, Grace

Posted by TayariJones on December 16, 2007 04:11 PM
Filed under Guest Bloggers

rea_grace.jpg
Originally uploaded by splendidenvy

For ten years I worked as a waitress, and during that time I started publishing books. I really didn't know what an MFA was. But as a waitress at Leroy's, which was the first coffee shop in Tribeca, a lot of our customers were artists just moving into that neighborhood. A friend- got me the job. We were collaborating on plays with titles like "Art Failures", which we performed at The University of The Streets, then on the cheap, and deserted Avenue A. My friend was also a painter and the painters I knew, knew about MFAs. But I was not aware that writers could also get them.

This was probably 1984, when the gentrification of the city was already underway- and a cultural shift was accompanying it. As part of yuppification, the arts were "professionalizing", this meant that work was coming less and less from community and more and more from institutions. There was a kind a Apparatus being put into place that - like most structures of American life right after Reagan's election- was replacing sixtiesque values of access and expression, expansion of representation. This professionalization favored more mainstream and dominant cultural voices and styles and made it harder for civilians to gain access.

After talking to a number of customers I realized that MFAs were increasingly giving people professional advantages, and increasingly excluding those without, so I decided to pursue one of those degrees. Since my work had lesbian protagonists, and was political, I already had enough problems, and I hoped that "getting inside" would help me along. I applied to the graduate program in writing at City College because it was in Manhattan and the cheapest, and I was accepted. In my naivete I didn't fully realize that the City College program was actually an MA. But since it was a graduate writing program, in my mind, it was an MFA.

The first day I went to class, and the teacher was Grace Paley. Grace was the "people's choice" emblematic New York writer. She was Jewish, she was on the left and an active participant citizen. I had participated in many political actions that she was involved in over the years, most memorably the 1979 Women's Pentagon Action. She wrote stories about people's need for justice that were true, complex and funny. And she was both extraordinary and regular. Her three beloved short story collections were : Enormous Changes At The Last Minute, Little Disturbances Of Man, and Later The Same Day. What I now realize is that, despite how well known and beloved she was, she had to work for a living for most of her life. I believe that at that time she was teaching at City College and at Sarah Lawrence.

During the first class session, we sat around a table, and each student read a sample of their own work. Mine, was a lesbian story written in the first person, and my classmates thought that the protagonist was a man. I started to worry about spending the next two years in that environment. Was getting an MFA going to be a endless process of self-justification?

After class, Grace said "Come to my office."

I went to her office and she sat me down. All the warm and fuzzy stuff went out of her demeanor, and she spoke very directly and with a real sense of gravitas.

"Look," she said. "You're really a writer. You're really doing it. You don't need this class."

I felt really relieved. So, I went home and never came back. That's how I had only one day of graduate school. She saved me two years of explaining myself. She knew better than I did what the process would have done to me. It could have destroyed me. That was one of the most important moments in my life as a writer. When someone with authority actually understood the value of what I was doing, understood what the machinery was about, and stepped up to honestly protect me with respect and care.

Now that I have taught writing for 15 years, I can see that many of these programs still don't really know what to do with writers of color, lesbian students, sometimes with gay male students. You hear a lot of "survival" stories, and realize that many current writing programs in 2007, cannot offer minority students the same quality of experience as they offer to majority students.

This story has two happy endings: 1) Now I am a Full Professor of English in the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. 2) I later read with Grace and Sonia Sanchez at a reading at Saint Mark's Church at a benefit organized by the late Laurel Shreck for The Committee In Solidarity of The People Of El Salvador. It was one of the most exciting, proud moments of my life.

For the next twenty years, Grace Paley encouraged me every time we met. She nominated me for PEN, she got me a teaching gig at The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Whenever we saw each other, she would say "I keep an eye on you. You're doing so well. I'm so proud of you." This made the difference every time.

December 17, 2007 11:21 AM

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December 18, 2007 07:47 PM

December 18, 2007 09:06 PM

January 2, 2008 10:07 AM

January 2, 2008 10:23 AM