Poet Carrie Allen McCray to read, discuss her work Oct. 19

On Oct. 19, the University's Arts Institute will host a reading and discussion by nationally recognized South Carolina poet Carrie Allen McCray at the Columbia Museum of Art in downtown Columbia. She will read from her newest collection of poetry, Ota Benga Under My Mother's Roof. A live musical and vocal score also will be performed. On Oct. 18, a poetry workshop will be held in conjunction with this event on campus in Room 231 of the the Sumwalt Building.

All of these events are free and open to the public.

McCray's poems grapple with the understanding and appreciation of the societal issues of race and exploitation. She has earned national literary recognition for her novels and poetry. The poems in Ota Benga Under My Mother's Roof are provocative and courageous.

In September 1906, the Bronx Zoo in New York unveiled a new exhibit in the Monkey House: a man named Ota Benga. He was 22 years old and a member of the Batwa people, pygmies who lived in what was then the Belgian Congo.

Ota Benga first came to the United States in 1904. The St. Louis World's Fair had hired Samuel Phillips Verner, an American explorer and missionary, to bring African pygmies to the exposition. After the fair, Verner, as promised, took the Africans back to their country. But Ota Benga found that all the members of his particular tribe had been annihilated during his time away, and so he asked Verner to take him back to the United States.

Ota Benga ended up on display at the Bronx Zoo, with an estimated 40,000 visitors a day going to see him. At the same time, a group of African-American ministers mounted a vigorous protest against the inhumane exhibit.

The Bronx Zoo soon closed the exhibit, and the ministers' group moved Ota Benga to the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. He stayed there for a short time before being relocated to Lynchburg, Va., where various families housed him and tried to help him live a normal life.

McCray, now 92, knew Ota Benga when she was a little girl in Lynchburg. For a time, he lived with her family. Her latest collection of poems recount that time in her life.

The schedule for the Arts Institute event is:

• Oct. 18, 6:30 p.m., poetry workshop, hosted by Charlene Spearen and two MFA students from the University's Department of English. Selected poems from McCray's manuscript will be explored and will serve as inspiration for the writing of new poems. USC campus, Sumwalt Building, 1212 Greene St., Room 231.
• Oct. 19, 6:30-7 p.m. reception, 7-8 p.m. performance--Ota Benga Under My Mother's Roof: A Celebration of Carrie Allen, reading and discussion by McCray, and a live musical and vocal score by composer Kevin Simmonds, performed by vocalist Celia Teasdel,and instrumentalists James Miller, Christopher Neely, and Nicole Neely. Columbia Museum of Art, corner of Main and Hampton Streets.

For more information, contact Charlene Spearen, USC Arts Institute, at cmspeare@gwm.sc.edu or 7-5492.

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