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ALSO INSIDE Winter–Spring How Catherine 2018 Newman ’90 wrote her way out of a certain kind of stuckness in her novel, and Amherst in her life. HIS BLACK HISTORY The unfinished story of Harold Wade Jr. ’68 XXIN THIS ISSUE: WINTER–SPRING 2018XX 20 30 36 His Black History Start Them Up In Them, We See Our Heartbeat THE STORY OF HAROLD YOUNG, AMHERST- WADE JR. ’68, AUTHOR OF EDUCATED FOR JULI BERWALD ’89, BLACK MEN OF AMHERST ENTREPRENEURS ARE JELLYFISH ARE A SOURCE OF AND NAMESAKE OF FINDING AND CREATING WONDER—AND A REMINDER AN ENDURING OPPORTUNITIES IN THE OF OUR ECOLOGICAL FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM RAPIDLY CHANGING RESPONSIBILITIES. BY KATHARINE CHINESE ECONOMY. INTERVIEW BY WHITTEMORE BY ANJIE ZHENG ’10 MARGARET STOHL ’89 42 Art For Everyone HOW 10 STUDENTS AND DOZENS OF VOTERS CHOSE THREE NEW WORKS FOR THE MEAD ART MUSEUM’S PERMANENT COLLECTION BY MARY ELIZABETH STRUNK Attorney, activist and author Junius Williams ’65 was the second Amherst alum to hold the fellowship named for Harold Wade Jr. ’68. Photograph by BETH PERKINS 2 “We aim to change the First Words reigning paradigm from Catherine Newman ’90 writes what she knows—and what she doesn’t. one of exploiting the 4 Amazon for its resources Voices to taking care of it.” Winning Olympic bronze, leaving Amherst to serve in Vietnam, using an X-ray generator and other Foster “Butch” Brown ’73, about his collaborative reminiscences from readers environmental work in the rainforest. PAGE 18 6 College Row XX ONLINE: AMHERST.EDU/MAGAZINE XX Support for fi rst-generation students, the physics of a Slinky, migration to News Video & Audio Montana and more Poet and activist Sonia Sanchez, In its interdisciplinary exploration 14 the fi rst African-American of the Trump Administration, an The Big Picture woman to serve on the Amherst Amherst course taught by Ilan A contest-winning photo faculty, returned to campus to Stavans held a Trump Point/ from snow-covered Kyoto give the keynote address at the Counterpoint Series featuring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy SONIA SANCHEZ Wesley Lowery, William Kristol 16 Symposium. and other journalists. Beyond Campus The Mead Art Museum received The “Alumni in the Field” video TRAVEL: Tomal Hossain ’17 studies a $3 million gift from John ’58 series catches up with Kirk music in the Muslim world and Sue Wieland to endow its Johnson ’82, who heads the CLIMATE: Butch Brown ’73 confronts director and chief curator position Smithsonian National Museum ecological issues with three nations and to support contemporary of Natural History, where he is art acquisitions. Works from the responsible for a collection of PSYCHOLOGY: Amy Summerville ’02 WIELAND COLLECTION conducts research on regret Wielands’ collection are currently more than 145 million objects. on display at the museum. Amherst Reads’ most recent 44 Amherst women’s basketball featured books are Why Poetry, Amherst Creates set a new NCAA Division III by Matthew Zapruder ’89, and NONFICTION: Justin Spring ’84 record for consecutive road wins, Without Precedent: Chief Justice profi les six culinary writers and a new program record for John Marshall and His Times, by HISTORY: King Philip’s War through consecutive victories. Joel R. Paul ’77. Native eyes WESLEY LOWERY PHOTOGRAPHY: Sabato Visconti ’09’s purposeful glitches FILM: The Ballad of Lefty Brown EDITOR WE WANT TO HEAR ALSO INSIDE Winter–Spring Amherst (USPS 024-280) How Catherine 2018 Newman ’90 wrote her POETRY: David Ferry ’46 translates way out of a certain kind of FROM YOU stuckness in her novel, and Amherst is published quarterly in her life. The Aeneid Emily Gold Boutilier (413) 542-8275 Amherst welcomes by Amherst College at HIS letters from its readers. Amherst, Massachusetts magazine@amherst. 01002-5000, and is Please send them to 49 edu sent free to all alumni. Classes magazine@amherst. Periodicals postage paid at BLACK ALUMNI EDITOR edu or Amherst Amherst, Massachusetts Betsy Cannon Magazine, PO Box 01002-5000 and additional HISTORY Smith ’84 5000, Amherst, MA mailing offi ces. Postmaster: The unfinished 103 Please send Form 3579 story of Harold In Memory (413) 542-2031 01002. to Amherst, AC # 2220, Wade Jr. ’68 Letters must be PO Box 5000, Amherst DESIGN DIRECTOR 300 words or fewer College, Amherst, MA What would Harold Ronn Campisi 01002-5000. 112 and should address Wade Jr. ’68 have done the content in the had he not died young? Contest ASSISTANT EDITOR magazine. A physics test Katherine Duke ’05 SENIOR WRITER Katharine Whittemore XXFIRST WORDSXX As you may or may not know, there is no shortage of writing advice. This makes a certain kind of sense, given that the peo- ple writing the writing advice are writers, and that’s kind of what writers do—write stuff. Much of this advice is dreary, pomp- ous or even, on a certain kind of day, embit- Write 1,000 words a day, 5,000 words a day. Write with a brown- tering. Much of it is contradictory. Write inked fountain pen in an unlined journal bound with the tanned hide what you know. Write what you don’t know. of your own insufficiency. (Sigh.) I am what I like to call a working writer, which means that I can’t enjoy the luxury, or so I like to grittily imagine, of such fainting-couch predica- ments as “writer’s block.” I have deadlines. There is copy to write—for women’s magazines, admission offices, the raisin people (don’t ask). But, then, I am lying a little bit, too. Because I re- cently pussyfooted into fiction, which I had written not at all since Judith Frank’s amazing Fiction 1 class in By Catherine Newman ’90 the spring of 1990, and I needed writing advice after all. Fiction was different, it turned out. Nonfiction is like those TV contests where you get a basket of pre- chosen ingredients to cook with: tangerines and meat and licorice, and it’s weird, but that’s what you have, so you make Anise-Scented Citrus Pork Chops. Or, in the real-life version, your baby barfed into the hood of your jacket, your best friend died, your raisin scones came out gritty. So those are the mandatory ingredients of your story. Fiction, on the other hand. My god! There are no constraints. The whole world is your oyster, and you can’t complain about the materials at hand, given that it is all the materials ever. I am circling back to writing advice here. Because what happened was this: I wrote a book in which boy-and-girl 12-year-old best friends Walter and Frankie contrive to stay overnight in an IKEA store. I wanted it to be like From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler—that favorite book of my own childhood, in which the main characters spend a series of nights in the Metropolitan Museum of Art—only with a modern twist. My own children were obsessed with the IKEA catalogue, are still, study it like scripture, like they’ll be tested on the differences between an EKTORP sofa and a KNISLINGE sectional. There didn’t need to be more than IKEA in the story, as far as I was concerned, because even in Mixed-Up Files, I hadn’t cared about the rich-old-lady-stolen- Michelangelo subplot: I only wanted to hear about the kids sleeping in the elaborate historical bed, admiring 2 AMHERST WINTER–SPRING 2018 the princess jewelry, washing in the famous fountain, friend of 40 years had died, saying all the exact same fishing the wishing coins from that same fountain. kinds of heartbreaking and funny things in hospice The fun parts. that Walter’s dad said when he was dying! And you are But something was missing from my book, and I likely thinking: This does not actually describe a very understood this even before my editor said, “Some- mystical process. It sounds more like the fortuneteller thing is missing from your book.” Something was in The Wizard of Oz amazing Dorothy with his insight wrong with my character Walter, and I didn’t know after secretly rooting through her basket of photo- CATHERINE what it was. “Something is wrong with Walter,” I said graphs. (“There’s a woman. She’s wearing a polka-dot NEWMAN ’90 to my husband in the middle of the night, as if Walter dress. Her face is careworn.” “That’s Aunt Em.” “Yes. is the author were a friend with a dark secret, and not a fictional Her name is Emily.”) of the middle- child of my own making. And so, in order to figure out But it was both things. grade novel One exactly what Walter’s problem was, I wrote. I did the I did and also did not know my own story. And so I Mixed-Up Night (Random House, kind of writing I learned in Professor Frank’s class: wrote my way out of a certain kind of stuckness in my 2017). pen-to-paper, stream-of-consciousness, uncritical, novel. I wrote my way out of a certain kind of stuck- unedited free-writing. The very kind of thing I hate to ness in my life. Grief is what you might properly call hear about, when fiction writers talk about their own that second kind of stuckness, and out is not exactly invented stories and characters as if they exist in some where I ended up. Closer to fine, though, if I can quote sort of Jungian stream that must be channeled into the the Indigo Girls (who were also a part of that Fiction under-irrigated fields of their own imagination.