SOURCE: “Grace Paley,” in Conversations with Grace Paley, edited by Gerhard Bach and Blaine H. Hall, University Press of Mississippi Jackson, 1997, pp. 213-225.

The following interview was originally conducted in 1991, and was originally published in Broken Silences (1993), edited by Shirley M. Jordan. In the interview, Jordan and Paley discuss Paley's feelings about racial relationships, her methods for writing character and dialogue, and relationships between women.

[Jordan:] What specific conditions seems to be in place when black and white women become friends?

[Paley:] That’s very hard. … Well, there has to be an awful lot of trust. It has to be able to go two ways. But I think mostly the black woman has to be able to trust the white woman. By that I mean that the white woman has to be trustworthy. I could probably think of a better answer but that’s a beginning. A matter...