Elaine Neil Orr – författare

From the critically acclaimed writer of A Different Sun, a Southern coming-of-age novel that sets three very different young people against the tumultuous years of the American civil rights movement...Tacker Hart left his home in North Carolina as a local high school football hero, but returns in disgrace after being fired from a prestigious architectural assignment in West Africa. Yet the culture and people he grew to admire have left their mark on him. Adrift, he manages his father''s grocery store and becomes reacquainted with a girl he barely knew growing up. Kate Monroe''s parents have died, leaving her the family home and the right connections in her Southern town. But a trove of disturbing letters sends her searching for the truth behind the comfortable life she''s been bequeathed. On the same morning but at different moments, Tacker and Kate encounter a young African-American, Gaines Townson, and their stories converge with his. As Winston-Salem is pulled into the tumultuous 1960s, these three Americans find themselves at the center of the civil rights struggle, coming to terms with the legacies of their pasts as they search for an ennobling future.

This study argues for the importance of negotiation for feminist practice within a plurality of critical positions and identities. It suggests that feminist critics are necessarily operating between scenes of power, negotiating their interests across uneven fields.

A "lush, evocative, breathtaking"* debut novel from Elaine Neil Orr, "reminiscent of Barbara Kingsolver''s magnum opus, The Poisonwood Bible, with elements of Joseph Conrad and Louise Erdrich."*Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. When Emma Davis reads the words of Isaiah 6:8 in her room at a Georgia women’s college, she understands her true calling: to become a missionary. It is a leap of faith that sweeps her away to Africa in an odyssey of personal discovery, tremendous hardship, and profound transformation.For the earnest, headstrong daughter of a prosperous slave owner, living among the Yoruba people is utterly unlike Emma’s sheltered childhood—as is her new husband, Henry Bowman. Twenty years her senior, the mercurial Henry is the object of Emma’s mad first love, intensifying the sensations of all they see and share together. Each day brings new tragedy and heartbreak, and each day, Emma somehow finds the hope, passion, and strength of will to press onward. Through it all, Henry’s first gift to Emma, a simple writing box—with its red leather-bound diary and space for a few cherished keepsakes—becomes her closest confidant, Emma’s last connection to a life that seems, in this strange new world, like a passing memory.A tale of social and spiritual awakening; a dispatch from a difficult era at home and abroad; and a meditation on faith, freedom, and desire, A Different Sun is a captivating fiction debut.  *Library Journal (starred review)

This intense examination of the writings of Tillie Olsen shows Elaine Neil Orr's deeply sympathetic passion for Olsen's literary world. Orr's objective is not simply to offer literary criticism but to interpret the subjects that inspire and disclose Olsen's spiritual vision. In Tell me a Riddle, Yonnondio, and , TIllie Olsen presents a world troubled by the problems of sex, race, and class and inhabited by people who are broken, silenced, defeated. Yet her artistic vision of this tragic world reveals Olsen's resounding affirmation of life. Orr's study shows Olsen's work as a blending of Marxist, feminist, literary, and religious views that give it a unique spiritual perspective. ""As the reader progresses through this book,"" Orr says, ""he or she will discover, I believe, that even when Olsen's texts appear to fail, they still evoke our sympathy and compel us to listen."" Though the body of Olsen's work is small, its substance is of great significance. Her vision is rooted in her family's Russian Jewish heritage and in her own history as an American worker, a member of the Communist party, a humanist, a feminist, and a mother. Olsen's portraits of weary workers and mothers, of children, of a dying sailor, and of a black church worker express her enduring hope for transformation and fulfillment and convey the central meaning of her work-the miracle and sanctity of each human life. Thus this first book-length study of Tillie Olsen is a religious interpretation showing a woman-centered world that intertwines the religious and the material and produces Olsen's vision of holiness.

Elaine Neil Orr, born in Nigeria to expat parents, brings us an indelible portrait of a young female artist, torn between two men and two cultures, struggling to find her passion and her purpose.It’s 1963 and Isabel Hammond is an expat who has accompanied her agriculture aid worker husband to Nigeria, where she is hoping to find inspiration for her art and for her life. Then she meets charismatic local singer Bobby Tunde, and they share a night of passion that could upend everything. Seeking solace and distraction, she returns to her painting and her home in a rural town where she plants a lemon tree and unearths an ancient statue buried in her garden. She knows that the dancing female figure is not hers to keep, yet she is reluctant to give it up, and soon, she notices other changes that make her wonder what the dancing woman might portend.Against the backdrop of political unrest in Nigeria, Isabel’s personal situation also becomes precarious. She finds herself in the center of a tide of suspicion, leaving her torn between the confines of her domestic life and the desire to immerse herself in her art and in the culture that surrounds her. The expat society, the ancient Nigerian culture, her beautiful family, and even the statue hidden in a back room—each trouble and beguile Isabel. Amid all of this, can she finally become who she wants to be?