Lorene Cary, author and senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, gave a lecture titled "Memoir, History and Mystery" in the Barn on Oct. 21. Cary is best known as the author of Black Ice, a memoir of her years as a black female student and later teacher at St. Paul's, an exclusive New England boarding school. She spoke about the experience of writing this book and the unique process of writing a memoir.
Professor of Government Steve Orvis introduced Cary, mentioning her many awards for women's leadership, black leadership, community service and teaching, saying that he was very impressed by the wide array Cary is involved in. Orvis is teaching a section of the College 130 class, in which Cary's Black Ice is being read by students. "Her reflections on the St. Paul's School," Orvis said, "can teach us some things about life at Hamilton."
Cary began her talk by reading aloud a passage from Black Ice, in which she relates the feelings she had before going to St. Paul's school. She and the other students who were integrating the school felt the obligation to shake things up. Cary learned this from her mother, whose "turning out" of white people who disrespected her because of her race showed her daughter an example of black power and duty. Her responsibility at St. Paul's, she felt, was to do well academically and exceed all expectations. This pressure made her "tightly wound," she said.
In trying to relate all these experiences in her memoir, Cary said that she wanted to find a way to reconstruct for the reader the mysteries of life that she found in that place. In the course of writing the book, however, she discovered some new mysterious experiences. While writing, she found that she was slipping back into adolescence, having a feeling of "going down the rabbit hole," and "writing into the mystery," she said. While these feelings made her nervous, her editor assured her that "some fine books" had come of this same unnerving process, and she continued on with the memoir.
Cary spoke about some of the problems she encountered in trying to capture her life, not as a sociological story about her but as a human being and a girl growing up. To write a story about integrating St. Paul's school, she said, she had to find out how her experience there was integrated into her life and personality. She also sought to make her writing like a pair of jeans, she said - "lean, easygoing prose... that makes the language recede and the picture explode in your brain."
Another obstacle Cary faced was making her personal story political, and sharing her anger without enraging the reader. She does feel that her story has political and social weight. As she said, "Black and white in America - and class in America - are a bad marriage. We, the children of that marriage, are forced to take sides."
In writing Black Ice, Cary said, she sought to write her own story into history and validate it as part of the world of authentic black experience. However, writing is not enough in Cary's opinion, but rather it is only "licking the gravy off the fat of the land." To deserve this privilege, Cary said, she works hard through activism and leadership to bring others the same opportunities that she has had.
Lorene Cary's lecture was sponsored by the College 130 classes, the departments of Africana Studies and Women's Studies, the Office of the President, the Dean of the Faculty, and the Kirkland Project.
