Young
writers honored for their prose at Barnard/CBS
Essay Contest
NEW
YORK, N.Y. - Barnard's lower-level McIntosh
- packed with several hundred parents, teachers,
brothers and sisters - grew quiet as Letiah
Fraser, first-place winner in the Barnard/CBS
Essay Contest, took the podium Thursday,
April 4, to read her essay on A Woman I
Admire.
Hesitant
at first, and choking back tears at times,
Fraser recounted how her aunt Iona had taught
her to speak and walk confidently, despite
cerebral palsy, showing her the meaning
of Emily Dickinson's comment that "We never
know how high we are/till we are called
to rise."
Recalling long afternoons spent indoors
while others played outside, Fraser, now
a student at John Bowne High School in Brooklyn,
recalled her aunt's words: " 'Do you want
this candy bar?' she tempted. 'Then, you
have to do your homework,' her voice purred.
The candy bar sat there doing its work,
and I sounded out the vowels and made them
clear enough to earn my reward."
Fraser's
story, which left many in the audience with
tears in their eyes, was one of four prize-winning
essays awarded out of the 519 submitted
this year by 11th-grade female students
at 70 New York City public high schools,
a record for the nine years of the contest's
existence. Twenty-eight certificates of
merit were issued.
The
essays, all on the topic of A Woman I Admire,
provide a vivid, sometimes-sad, and often-inspiring
view into the lives of the young, New York
City writers. Most - about 72 percent -
wrote about family members, contradicting
the common wisdom that young people have
only celebrities as role models. (Full
breakdown by subject)
Novelette
Forte, the fourth-place winner and a student
at Erasmus Hall Campus: High School for
the Humanities in Brooklyn, wrote of her
aunt Novy, who "took me from a world where
my feelings were only pain and heartache,
to a place where I was loved."
Abandoned
by her mother, and raised by a grandmother
in a home in Jamaica where there "was never
love and warmth," Forte wrote that her aunt
in Brooklyn "made me understand that my
mother did not leave me because she did
not want me, but because she was just a
frightened child herself."
Shelley Diaz, the second-place winner from
Townsend Harris High School in Queens, wrote
of her sister Melanie, who suffers from
minor cerebral palsy, that "she has fallen
many times, literally, but she has always
gotten up."
Jonathan
Levi, executive assistant to Harold Levy,
interim chancellor of the Board of Education,
praised the contest, which is underwritten
by The CBS Foundation, and told the crowd
that the young writers made him reassess
his own experience.
He
cited the comment of Esther Negrón, the
third-place winner and student at Harry
Van Arsdale High School, who wrote that
after hearing a fellow student read a poem
of Maya Angelou to a stunned audience with
"MTV-closed minds" that "I knew … I wanted
to become a talented writer who consumes
every mental barrier." The phrase, he said,
suggested a way of refashioning adversity
into art.
And he praised Diaz for writing that her
sister demonstrated that "a loud voice cannot
compete with a clear one."
"I
thank you for teaching me something and
for educating the Board of Education," Levi
said.
Teachers
and principals, some of whom came to see
their students even when parents did not,
played strong supporting roles in the success
of the winners.
Bruce Billig, administrator of Van Arsdale
High School, after receiving Negron's essay
at the last minute, personally drove from
the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to
the City's main post office on 37th Street
in Manhattan to get it postmarked in time."
And Maryann Dickar, social studies chair
at Erasmsus Hall, persuaded a reluctant
Forte that she should enter the contest
by getting her to talk about her aunt. "She
was really hesitant. She thought she couldn't
do it. We just needed to talk it out."
Judges for the contest were: Quandra Prettyman,
professor of English at Barnard, and three
Barnard alumnae: Angela Tung, author of
Song of the Stranger, Rosemarie Robotham,
author of The Bluelight Corner and editor-at-large
at Essence magazine, and Alison Hockenberry,
an award-winning TV producer.
Judith
Shapiro, president of Barnard and a cultural
anthropologist, acted as master of ceremonies
for the event. She concluded by likening
the contestants to a woman named Nisa, of
the !Kung San people of the Kalahari Desert
in Africa who made their living by hunting
and gathering.
"In
the course of talking about her life to
an anthropologist, Nisa said the following:
'I'll break open the story and tell you
what is there. Then, like the others that
have fallen out onto the sand, I will finish
with it, and the wind will take it away.'
Well, you here tonight are the hunters and
the gatherers of what the wind would otherwise
blow away - and we thank and congratulate
you. It means a great deal to all of us
here at Barnard that we have been able to
read, enjoy and celebrate your work. "
Full
text of four winning essays
-
Lucas Bernays Held
Contact:
Lucas Held, Barnard College, 212-854-7583
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