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
Ice is 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."
Black Ice Essay "The distance between where we were and the ideal kept us all in a
painful reaching, jumping, leaping at the sky." Lorene Cary entered St. Paul's school
wanting to make a difference. To take advantage of an education, that to many black
people of her time, only existed in their dreams. She felt as though this education would
change her life. Bring her power. St. Paul's did change Cary's life, and it opened many
doors for her. However these doors were heavy and not easily moved. In her stay at St.
Paul's Cary learned the extremes of many emotions. The guilt of thinking she had
received an opportunity she didn't deserve. Fear lingering at all times, the fear of failure,
of letting everyone down. Of course there were more emotions, but one was above all the
rest: confidence. Cary saw both ends of this emotion. At times she felt like she could take
the school and "turn it out" just as she had come to do. At other times she felt as though
she were trapped in a world that would swallow her whole because it knew she was not
...