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Vera House Executive Director Randi Bregman had the
honor and privilege of introducing Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author
Anna Quindlen
at the Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series held Wednesday,
October 15th. Randi Bregman's introductory remarks follow:
"For 25 years, Anna Quindlen's work has appeared in
some of America's most influential newspapers and
widely-read magazines. Her books, including her
latest novel
Blessings,
have been fixtures on both fiction and non-fiction
bestseller lists. The day I learned that I would be
introducing Ms. Quindlen, I came home to find my
seventh grade son working on homework that asked him
to respond to a column by Anna Quindlen on changing
neighborhoods.
Words are inadequate to describe what an honor it is
for me to have the opportunity to welcome and
introduce Anna Quindlen. For years, I enjoyed reading
Ms. Quindlen's newspaper columns, nodding my head in
agreement with her insightful observations, often
laughing out loud at her witty commentary. Then I
read the novels
Object Lessons
and
One True Thing,
powerful fiction about families and their central role
in our lives from generation to generation. Through
these novels and the thought-provoking columns, I had
already become a great fan of Anna Quindlen.
Then, I read the novel
Black and Blue,
in which Ms. Quindlen tells the story of Fran and her
son Robert and their attempt to flee the violence that
permeated their lives. Early on in the book, Fran's
character explains:
My son scarcely ever cries. And his smile
comes so seldom that it's like bright sunshine on
winter snow, blinding and strange. It's been this way
for as long as I can remember. `Robert's an old soul,'
Grace used to say, maybe because she knew I needed to
hear it, to think Robert's silence, his preternatural
self-possession, were inherent, not acquired, not the
equivalent of covering your ears, hiding your eyes.
And later in the book:
When I was Fran, Frannie,
Frannie, Fran, I felt like two people at once, the
woman who seemed so in control and content, and the
one with the black eyes and broken bones, the one who
loved her husband and feared and hated him, all at the
same time.
After many years of hearing women describe the pain
and humiliation they endured at the hands of partners
who were supposed to love and cherish them, I read
Black and Blue
with my heart pounding and tears flowing. Somehow Anna
Quindlen had taken the fear that courses through the
veins of domestic violence victims and made it so real
that every reader could feel it as their own. The
complexity of feelings—the love and the loyalty, the
hopelessness and the despair, the sadness and the
anger—move gracefully from Ms. Quindlen's narrative
into the hearts and minds of the reader.
Ms. Quindlen speaks for those whose voices have been
silenced or ignored for far too long. She compels us
to look deep within ourselves, and ask what can each
of us do for the Frans and Roberts in our own
community.
In interviews around the time that
Black and Blue
was published, there was much discussion of how
Black and Blue
was the first of Quindlen's novels to stray
from a suspected autobiographical connection. Ms.
Quindlen explained in interviews that
Black and Blue
was "completely imagined" and without an
autobiographical tie. In preparing for tonight's
introduction, I believe that I may have found a
notable similarity between the author and the novel.
Anna Quindlen's character Fran Benedetto is courageous
and strong, bright and competent, powerful and
passionate, independent and inspiring, all traits that
she shares with the author that you have come to hear
tonight.
Please join me in welcoming Anna Quindlen."
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