Black Ice

In 1972 Lorene Cary, a bright, ambitious black teenager from Philadelphia, was transplanted into the formerly all-white, all-male environs of the elite St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, where she became a scholarship student in a "boot camp" for future American leaders. Like any good student, she was determined to succeed. But Cary was also determined to succeed without selling out. This wonderfully frank and perceptive memoir describes the perils and ambiguities of that double role, in which failing calculus and winning a student election could both be interpreted as betrayals of one's skin. Black Iceis also a universally recognizable document of a woman's adolescence; it is, as Houston Baker says, "a journey into selfhood that resonates with sober reflection, intellignet passion, and joyous love."

Lorene Cary’s new novel <b>Pride</b> (Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday, 1998; Anchor 1999) is told in the voices of four friends–“subtle, idiosyncratic characters...whose personalities seem utterly, and affectingly, distinctive,” according to <i>The New York Times Book Review</i>. It also praises the book’s ability to shift “between the staccato directness of black slang and the more formal cadences of standard English....”<br><br><b>The Price of A Child</b> has been selected as the first city-wide One Book, One Philadelphia<b> </b>choice. The novel traces one woman’s escape from slavery and brings alive Philadelphia’s Underground Railroad history. A <i>New York Times</i><b> </b>reviewer called the writer “a powerful storyteller, fra