The reading I’ve completed thus far of Black Ice has shown me a bit of Lorene’s character as a young girl: smart and a bit shy, but very ambitious overall. These qualities are nothing out of the ordinary or uncommon for a girl of her age to possess. What Lorene does do, however, is put bits of “older Lorene” within the memoir. Her remarks are innocent, yet still powerful in their purpose. She reflects upon her adolescent memories and thoughts insightfully–it shows her experience as a writer and how the years gone by have shaped and “revised” her memories.
I found an essay from the November 4, 1991 edition of “Newsweek,” written by Lorene. It is called “The Children’s Crusade: The journeys of a black prep-school graduate.” She discusses the problems that America faces, as a nation, concerning race. She describes our issues, as a whole, as an addiction–one that America cannot rid itself of. “Integration” is already here, according to Cary, because we all have set ideas in our minds about race and education of our children. The education system is “like a modern sort of children’s crusade” in which “we ask them to be bridges instead of children.” Lorene sees–because of her experiences–that the American education system is merely a “show” of progress, or, in her own words, a “hoax.” She also uses this essay as a “call to arms” of sorts. Unlike the more reserved older Lorene seen in Black Ice, this Lorene is very forthright with her opinions and very firm with her beliefs; Lorene wants change. I feel that this essay is a push for hope that others around her will see her troubles with America and will feel moved enough to feel the same way. Lorene writes, “Kicking the habit for me involves committing myself to the journey – not pretending I’m already there. It means finding new standards of self-knowledge and personal and public responsibility.” This statement, for me, is the climax of the essay. It brings about thoughts discussed in class on Monday about the term “unruly.” Lorene was unruly in her choice to write Black Ice, yet that memoir, in my opinion, is fairly innocent. I think that Lorene wants this innocence to be noticed because she did not realize the gravity of her experience as a black girl going to a prep-school while she was young. It wasn’t until she became older that she saw it as her duty to expose the truths behind the “unruly conversation” in America. This essay is the perfect example of her pulling out all the stops and truly giving the reader a very explicit look into the problems of race and education. Her journey involves both writing and social awareness at all social levels. This “unruliness” becomes “headstrong” because her opinions are so full of conviction; Lorene, in a sense, cannot and will not be stopped in her journey. Lorene also writes, “I could not express clearly my frustration [about race and education] until years later when I read what the Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller had to say about writers. In order to draw on their store of unconscious aspiration, Miller wrote, some writers tap a cup of poison at the source, which they take to be the wide ocean beyond.” From this essay, I can see that the words written in her preface, of the innocent Black Ice, concerning her “people” and the importance of the book to her race are very resonant. Black Ice is just a step into this journey and Lorene is willing to go far with it. This “[tapping of] a cup of poison” means being unruly and truly breaking down the barriers of race and education that America has put up for so many years, and continues to keep them up. This “poison” is almost like sucking the poison out of the skin after a snake bite: it might hurt at first, but to make things better you have to get it out. Lorene does this through the writing of Black Ice and this essay.
http://www.lorenecary.org/templates/System/details.asp?id=40268&PID=489279
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