Orr, Elaine Neil 1954–

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ORR, Elaine Neil 1954–

PERSONAL: Born 1954, in Nigeria; married; husband's name, Andy; children: Joel. Education: Campbellsville University, B.A. (art); University of Louisville, M.A. (English); Emory University, Ph.D. (literature and theology).

ADDRESSES: Home—Raleigh, NC. Office—North Carolina State University, 201 Tompkins Hall, Box 8105, Raleigh, NC 27695. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Educator and writer. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, professor of English. Previously instructor in English at Spalding University, Louisville, KY.

AWARDS, HONORS: Southeast Booksellers Association Book Award nominee for creative nonfiction, 2004, for Gods of Noonday; grants and fellowships from National Endowment for the Humanities, North Carolina Arts Council, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and North Carolina Humanities Council.

WRITINGS:

Tillie Olsen and a Feminist Spiritual Vision, University of Mississippi Press (Jackson, MI), 1987.

Subject to Negotiation: Reading Feminist Criticism and American Women's Fictions, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 1997.

Gods of Noonday: A White Girl's African Life, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 2003.

Contributor of articles and poems to journals and magazines, including Southern Cultures, Missouri Review, Kalliope, Louisville Review, Black Mountain Review, Modern Language Quarterly, South Atlantic Review, and Journal of Narrative Technique.

SIDELIGHTS: In Subject to Negotiation: Reading Feminist Criticism and American Women's Fictions, Elaine Neil Orr examines works of women writers, including Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. Writing in the Mississippi Quarterly, Barbara Ladd observed that "the idea that feminist criticism is or can be a negotiation rather than an oppositional or subversive criticism is at the center" of Orr's book. Ladd, however, felt that Orr's reading and examination of works by Morrison and Piercy are more successful than her similar treatment of works by the other authors. Further, Ladd noted that Orr's "surprising moments [of] clarity" in the study are "almost always unsustained."

Born in Nigeria to missionary parents, Orr was brought up in Africa until she was a teenager and then was sent to the United States for her education. In her forties, Orr became seriously ill from kidney failure and needed dialysis and a transplant. She harkened back to her Nigerian past and a Yoruba saying that in order to journey forward, you need to journey back. This she does in Gods of Noonday: A White Girl's African Life, "a beautifully composed and poignant" memoir, as Cori Yonge described the book in the Mobile Register Online. Orr recounts her life as the daughter of Baptist medical missionaries in Nigeria. Throughout her youth she thought of herself as part African and part American. Yonge went on to note that "at a time when other children her age were slouching on the sofa watching June and Ward Cleaver in black and white, Orr was plunging into the clear, cold water of the Ethiope River and swimming against its swift currents." For Yonge, Orr's is a "courageous attempt to recapture and to understand her African life while dealing with the uncertainty of illness." Similarly, Kathleen Driskell called Orr's book a "shimmering memoir" in the Louisville, Courier-Journal. Driskell further commented that a book such as Orr's, describing a privileged youth in comparison to the childhoods of Nigerians, "could easily drift into a polemic about colonialism." Instead, Driskell pointed out, "Orr's memoir is more thoughtful than radical." The same critic concluded that Orr "balances the constellation of all with admirable talent in this very readable book."

Speaking with Yolanda Rodriquez in an interview for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Orr explained the title of her book: "It's in response to [Joseph Conrad's novel] Heart of Darkness, that conveys the idea of Africa as a place full of evil that has been abandoned by the gods," Orr noted to Rodriguez. "My experience of Nigeria is a place where God dwells and a place full of light. It's 'gods' because the Yoruba believe in one God, but they believe in many faces of God."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Gods of Noonday: A White Girl's African Life, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 2003.

PERIODICALS

Atlanta-Journal Constitution, January 21, 2004, Yolanda Rodriguez, interview with Orr, p. F3.

Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), November 9, 2003, Kathleen Driskell, review of Gods of Noonday: A White Girl's African Life.

Mississippi Quarterly, fall, 1998, Barbara Ladd, review of Subject to Negotiation: Reading Feminist Criticism and American Women's Fictions, p. 738.

Tennessean, February 8, 2004, Michael E. Jackson, review of Gods of Noonday.