Tuesday, June 28, 2016

A00630 - Austin Clarke, Canadian Author Who Explored the Black Experience


Austin Clarke, Canadian Author Who Explored Black Experience, Dies at 81

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




Austin Clarke in 2002 after winning the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel “The Polished Hoe.”Kevin Frayer/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

Austin Clarke, an award-winning author born in Barbados who wrote about the immigrant experience and being black in Canada, died on Sunday in Toronto. He was 81.
His agent, Denise Bukowski, confirmed his death but did not specify the cause.
Mr. Clarke won the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for his 2002 novel, “The Polished Hoe.” Set in the years immediately after World War II, it tells the story of Mary-Mathilda, a former house servant and mistress to a plantation’s powerful overseer, who years later offers a murder confession that lasts an entire night, forming an oral history “steeped in slavery, colonialism and sexual exploitation,” Ihsan Taylor wrote in The New York Times Book Review.
His final work was a memoir, “’Membering,” published last year. It describes his struggles with racial discrimination and his early days as a journalist covering the civil rights movement in Harlem in the 1960s. In all he wrote 10 novels, five short-story collections and several memoirs.
“Certainly, there is no other black Canadian author who has been so heartily embraced as Austin Clarke,” the literary critic Donna Bailey Nurse wrote in a 2003 profile in the trade magazine Quill & Quire.
Austin Chesterfield Clarke was born on July 26, 1934, in St. James, Barbados, and moved to Canada in 1955 to attend the University of Toronto. He turned to journalism before embarking on a career writing fiction.
His first two novels, “The Survivors of the Crossing” (1964) and “The Meeting Point” (1967), were set in the West Indies.
Mr. Clarke was a visiting lecturer at American universities in the late 1960s and early ‘70s and a founder of Yale University’s black studies program. For a time he was a cultural attaché to the Barbadian Embassy in Washington.
He moved back to his homeland in 1975 to become general manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation before returning to Canada the next year.
Mr. Clarke did not become a Canadian citizen until 1981. Asked why he had delayed doing so, he said, “I was not keen on becoming a citizen of a society that regarded me as less than a human being.”
Mr. Clarke was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1998. Survivors include four daughters, Janice Clarke, Loretta Clarke, Darcy Ballantyne, and Jordan Clarke; and a son, Michael.

____________________________________________________
Austin Ardinel Chesterfield "Tom" Clarke, CM OOnt (July 26, 1934 – June 26, 2016), was a Barbadian novelist, essayistand short story writer who was based in Toronto, Ontario.

Biography[edit]

Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto. After two years he turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He taught subsequently at several American universities, including Yale University(Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971–72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973).[1][2]
In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977).[3] Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977), and at the University of Western Ontario (1978).[1] From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.[4]
In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize "on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers".[5][6] Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include: Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington,Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart, and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: "I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors."[7]
Clarke died on June 26, 2016 at the age of 81 in Toronto.[8]

Selected awards and honours[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Novels[edit]

  • The Survivors of the Crossing (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964)
  • Amongst Thistles and Thorns (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965)
  • The Meeting Point (Toronto: Macmillan, 1967; Boston: Little, Brown, 1972)
  • Storm of Fortune (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973)
  • The Bigger Light (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975)
  • The Prime Minister (Don Mills, Ont.: General Publishing, 1977)
  • Proud Empires (London: Gollancz, 1986; Penguin-Viking, 1988)
  • The Origin of Waves (McClelland & Stewart, 1997; winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize)
  • The Question (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999; nominated for a Governor General's Award)
  • The Polished Hoe (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2002; winner of the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize)
  • More (2008, winner of the City of Toronto Book Award)

Short story collections[edit]

  • When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks (Toronto: Anansi, 1971; revised edition Little, Brown, 1973)
  • When Women Rule (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985)
  • Nine Men Who Laughed (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1986)
  • In This City (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1992)
  • There Are No Elders (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1993)
  • The Austin Clarke Reader, ed. Barry Callaghan (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1996)
  • Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2003)
  • They Never Told Me: and Other Stories (Holstein, ON: Exile Editions, 2013)

Poetry[edit]

Memoirs[edit]

  • Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack: a Memoir (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1980)
  • Public Enemies: Police Violence and Black Youth (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1992)
  • A Passage Back Home: A Personal Reminiscence of Samuel Selvon (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1994)
  • Pigtails 'n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir (New Press, 1999); as Pigtails 'n' Breadfruit: The Rituals of Slave Food, A Barbadian Memoir (Toronto: Random House, 1999; University of Toronto Press, 2001)
  • "A Stranger In A Strange Land", The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 15 August 1990, p. 30.
  • ′Membering (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2015)[9]



Austin Ardinel Chesterfield "Tom" Clarke, CM OOnt (July 26, 1934 – June 26, 2016), was a Barbadian novelist, essayistand short story writer who was based in Toronto, Ontario.

Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto. After two years he turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He taught subsequently at several American universities, including Yale University(Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971–72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973).[1][2]
In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977).[3] Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977), and at the University of Western Ontario (1978).[1] From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.[4]
In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize "on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers".[5][6] Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include: Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington,Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart, and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: "I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors."[7]
Clarke died on June 26, 2016 at the age of 81 in Toronto.[8]

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A00629 - Pat Summit, Legendary Tennessee Women's Basketball Coach

Pat Summitt, Tennessee Basketball Coach Who Emboldened Women’s Sports, Dies at 64

By JERÉ LONGMAN
SLIDE SHOW|9 Photos

Pat Summitt, a Coach Who Belonged on the ‘Mount Rushmore of Women’s Sports’

Pat Summitt, a Coach Who Belonged on the ‘Mount Rushmore of Women’s Sports’

Elsa/Getty Images
Pat Summitt, who was at the forefront of a broad ascendance of women’s sports, winning eight national basketball championships at the University of Tennessee and more games than any other Division I college coach, male or female, died on Tuesday. She was 64.
Her death was confirmed on the website of the Pat Summitt Foundation.
Summitt stepped down after 38 seasons and 1,098 victories at Tennessee in April 2012, at 59, less than a year after she learned she had early-onsetAlzheimer’s disease.
Over nearly four decades, Summitt helped transform women’s college basketball from a sport ignored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association into one that drew national television audiences and paid its most successful coaches more than $1 million a year.
“In modern history, there are two figures that belong on the Mount Rushmore of women’s sports — Billie Jean King and Pat Summitt,” Mary Jo Kane, a sports sociologist at the University of Minnesota, said in 2011. “No one else is close to third.”
Summitt, who was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000, was a trailblazer, ambassador and missionary. She was a co-captain of the 1976 women’s Olympic team, which won a silver medal, then guided the United States to gold as head coach at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. All of her players who completed their eligibility at Tennessee also graduated, school officials said.
Through much of her tenure at Tennessee, Summitt was willing to play any opponent, on any court, at any time. She opened her locker room to television cameras and gave viewers an unfiltered look at her demanding style, her steely glare and her unapologetically withering remarks to her players and to referees. Her hands pounded the court with such intensity sometimes that she flattened the rings on her fingers and had to have them rerounded in the off-season.
Her childhood on a Tennessee farm lent Summitt a rural hardiness. When she gave birth to her only child, Tyler, in 1990, she went into labor while on a recruiting trip in Pennsylvania and urged the pilots to fly her home so that her son would be born in Tennessee.
A month before she won her final championship, in 2008, Summitt dislocated her shoulder while shoving a raccoon off the deck of her home in Knoxville, then tried for two hours to reset her shoulder before calling a doctor. Her best teams displayed a similar toughness and determination, playing with ravenous attention to defense and rebounding.
“There may be coaches that win more than Pat, but there will never be another Pat Summitt,” Baylor Coach Kim Mulkey said.
Summitt, right, celebrated with, from left, Melissa McCray, Kathy Spinks and Bridgette Gordon after Tennessee won its first national title in women’s basketball, in 1987. Knoxville News-Sentinel
She was born Patricia Sue Head on June 14, 1952, in Clarksville, Tenn. The fourth of five children, she slept in a baby bed until she was 6. Her farmer father, Richard Head, was a disciplinarian who, she recalled, admonished his children that “cows don’t take a day off.”
During the day, she joined her three older brothers in baling hay and chopping tobacco. At night, she played basketball against her brothers and neighbors.
“I was the only girl,” Summitt once said. “They beat me up, but it made me tougher.”
Title IX, the federal law that prohibited discrimination in schools based on gender, was passed in 1972, but expanded opportunities for female athletes came haltingly. The N.C.A.A. did not begin sponsoring women’s basketball until 1982, 43 years after it held its first postseason tournament for men.
Still, the women’s game thrived in rural enclaves in states like Tennessee and Texas, where girls who worked on farms could not be told with any seriousness that they lacked the endurance to play sports.
Summitt attended the University of Tennessee at Martin and, upon graduating in 1974, became head coach at the University of Tennessee’s flagship campus in Knoxville. At 22, she was barely older than her players.
In football country, she made $250 a month to coach basketball and attend graduate school. She held a doughnut sale to help pay for the team uniforms, which she washed herself. Her team once slept on mats at an opponent’s gym because there was no money for a hotel.
She drove the team van to games, so intent on winning that “we never even stopped at McDonald’s,” said Holly Warlick, who played for Summitt at Tennessee, served as a longtime assistant and succeeded her as head coach.
Summitt’s first game at Tennessee ended in a 1-point defeat. When she phoned her parents to give them the news, she recalled, her father offered a bit of sage advice: “Tricia, don’t take donkeys to the Kentucky Derby” — meaning that the best coaches recruited the top players. For most of 38 seasons, she did.
Her two biggest stars, Chamique Holdsclaw of Queens and Candace Parker of suburban Chicago, led the Lady Vols to five of Summitt’s eight national titles and are considered two of the best women’s collegiate players of all time. Summitt’s best team, guided by Holdsclaw and reliant on relentless offense and aggressive defense, finished 39-0 to win the national title in 1998. To that point, no women’s team had won as many games in a season.
As the number of championships climbed, so did Summitt’s salary, eventually reaching $1.25 million a year. She was once approached by Tennessee officials about coaching the men’s team. She dismissed the overture, asking, “Why is that considered a step up?”
President Obama awarded Summitt the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
Summitt’s marriage of 27 years to R. B. Summitt, a banker, ended in divorce in 2008.
Her survivors include her son, Tyler, who was the women’s coach at Louisiana Tech before resigning this year over what was described as “an inappropriate relationship,” widely reported to be with one of his players; her mother, Hazel Albright Head; her sister, Linda Atteberry; and her brothers, Kenneth, Tommy and Charles Head.
Summitt’s eighth and final national title came in 2008, three short of the 11 titles won by Geno Auriemma, who coaches the Connecticut women’s team.
Summitt remained insatiable for victory, and defeat left her inconsolable. The low point of her career came with a stunning loss to Ball State in the first round of the 2009 N.C.A.A. tournament. At the time, Tennessee was the two-time defending national champion. None of Summitt’s teams had left the tournament so early. Afterward, she returned to her hotel room and watched replays all night.
“I didn’t sleep,” she later said. “I was so mad I threw things at the TV, yelled, screamed, cried.”
The next day, the Lady Vols returned to campus and Summitt made them practice, even though the season was over.
Summitt received the only sustained criticism of her career in 2007, when she canceled the annual games between Tennessee and Connecticut, a rivalry matched in college basketball only by that between the Duke and North Carolina men’s teams. She cited her concern with UConn’s recruiting of Maya Moore, who led the Huskies to two national titles and a record 90-game winning streak.
UConn did receive a slap on the wrist from the N.C.A.A. for arranging a tour for Moore of ESPN’s studios in Bristol, Conn. But that was considered a minor rules violation. Some sports commentators, and even some of Summitt’s former players, felt that she had put her personal conflict with Auriemma, the UConn coach, ahead of the overall good of women’s basketball.
“I am who I am,” Summitt said. “I will not compromise. No one is going to talk me into doing something I don’t want to do, when I know what I have been doing is by the book.”
Summitt began to notice changes in herself during the 2010-11 season: She grew forgetful during games; she lost track of meetings. After the season, she visited the Mayo Clinic, and doctors found that she had early-onset Alzheimer’s.
Summitt coached through the 2011-12 season, though her three assistant coaches assumed most of her duties during practices and games. The Lady Vols struggled at times but still came within one victory of reaching the Final Four. Shortly after the season ended, Summitt retired as head coach. She started a foundation to raise awareness about dementia.
Her memoir, “Sum It Up” (written with Sally Jenkins), was a best seller in 2013.
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