Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410310010
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: JEANNE JOHNSON DUDZIAK SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
"Raw Head, Bloody Bones" by Charlottesville author Mary E. Lyons belongs in the folklore category. These black American tales are more than creepy, sometimes macabre stories of the supernatural. They're a compilation of obscure stories that reveal the African imagination and help preserve a powerfully original oral tradition.
In "Raw Head," that tradition includes tales of a talking skull, dancing bones, a blood-sucking witch and a people-swallowing ogre. These sometimes grisly tales tap subconscious fears, bringing them into the light of conscious reflection.
Lyons is one of several authors who will read and sign books Saturday in Radford at "Books, Dreams and Literary Themes," a $25 per person luncheon, reading and literary get-together sponsored by DiscoveryWorks, a children's museum.
Of the books she's written, Lyons' favorite is "Letters from a Slave Girl," a fictional young adult's book based on the letters of Harriet Jacobs, a slave who escaped to freedom and whose writing was instrumental in bringing the issue of sexual abuse by slaveholders into the public eye.
No explicit abuse is included in "Slave Girl," but Lyons writes poignantly of Jacob's humiliation as she is pursued by her lecherous owner. Writes Lyons, "The Doctor, he been whispering filthy words in my ear. I know what he want, and I am ashamed for him and me both. He follow me everywhere. It's got so I look over my shoulder all the time. Today I step out on the piazza for a bit of air. Soon I heared footsteps and a low voice reminding me, 'You are my property.'"
Lyons has received numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Teacher/Scholar Award for Virginia, an award for the "best book on ethnicity at the secondary school level" by the National Council on Social Studies and a place on the 1993 list of "notable books for children."
But for Lyons, her highest compliment came when a student told her that "Slave GIrl" helped her to understand for the first time what slavery must have been like.
Lyons started out as a teacher and librarian. "I never intended to become an author," she says. "This is a total surprise to me." While teaching, Lyons discovered that there was a dearth of material to which her largely minority and female classroom could relate. She started researching and compiling material and ended up with "Sorrow's Kitchen," a book on the colorful life of novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, from her childhood struggles to her illustrious years as a participant in the black cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.
The "dark, voodoo tales" collected by Hurston provided the basis for "Raw Head." Lyons' husband, a rare- and used-book dealer, assisted in "Raw Head's" research by helping to dig up obscure material.
Lyons is a meticulous researcher who studies historical detail and visits original locales even when working on fiction. A recent series of biographical books on black American artists required exhaustive research. Such research not only gives her books historical authenticity but helps Lyons discover her subject's voice, a process that Lyons admits she doesn't fully understand, but which she views as crucial to her writing.
Other authors to be featured at the DiscoveryWorks luncheon are Amanda Cockrell, director of the Hollins College graduate program in children's literature; Jeanne Larson, professor of English at Hollins College and author of two novels set in medieval China; Simone Poirier-Bures, English faculty member at Virginia Tech; James I. Robertson, internationally-known Civil War expert on the Virginia Tech faculty; and Joan V. Schroeder, a Roanoke resident working on her second novel.
The luncheon will be held Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the Norwood Center in Radford.
Reservations will be accepted through Tuesday.
For more information, call 633-2233.
Lyons will also read from her works on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the Commonwealth Room, Heth Hall, Radford University.
by CNB