2011 Sigma Tau Delta Common Reader: Black Ice

by Gloria J. Hochstein, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, High Plains Regent

Black Ice, by Lorene Cary, is the Common Reader for 2011. Cary wrote this coming-of-age story to convey her experiences as a black Philadelphia teenager who, in 1972, became a scholarship student at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire in a program designed to develop future American leaders. When she later returns to St. Paul’s School as a teacher, she reflects on the experiences of Cary the student and Cary the teacher in a powerful memoir that has drawn comparisons to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. The environment of the elite, wealthy, and mostly white St. Paul’s School becomes the catalyst for Cary and fellow scholarship students to discover themselves, although not without difficulty on the way. Although overt racism is mostly absent from the school, Cary and the other scholarship students experience cultural conflicts, racial ignorance, and self doubt. Driven to excel in all areas, Cary feels the pressure of her expectations of herself compounded by her sense of obligation to her family, to the school, and to other young people. The New York Times Book Review calls the novel "A stunning memoir . . . Subtly nuanced and unsparingly self-aware . . . Black Ice is an extraordinarily honest, lively and appealing book."