Bernice Kelly Harris: A Good Life was Writing
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BERNICE KELLY HARRIS:
A Good Life was Writing
By Valerie Raleigh Yow
Louisiana State University Press, 2008
Hardbound ISBN: 978-0807123485
Softbound ISBN: 978-0807131565
To order, contact Louisiana State
University Press, or call 800-272-6817
or go to Amazon.com.
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Description
Bernice Kelly, school teacher and journalist, in her early thirties, close to the time she married Herbert Harris. The photograph was probably taken for the newspaper that published her articles, The Virginia Pilot.
This biography of the novelist and playwright Bernice Kelly Harris reveals the way a woman can wrestle with society’s restricted choice of roles, challenge her culture by writing critiques of it, and endure because she constructs a double life. On the outside, she was conventional and conforming: she was married to a business man and was an ardent church supporter. Her husband thought writing was superfluous, just “scribbling” and so she wrote when he was not at home. When she was writing, she created an incredibly imaginative existence. Her plays, short stories, and seven published novels are set in eastern North Carolina but there is a universality in them because her characters and situations evoke recognition from all kinds of readers. With a few deft touches, a phrase of two or three words, she captures the essence of a scene or character. She can insinuate into the most seemingly innocent occurrence or remark a depth of psychological distress. But she can also convey the magic in an ordinary moment.
Harris belongs to the tradition of women writers who present woman to the world as hero. She treats from different angles a woman’s need for freedom within the relationship with a mate versus the need for complete, intimate union. But she widens this need for connection to the other to include connection to the human group, as well. She asks, “How much and what do we give up so that we can belong?” And even more basic, “Can
there be any definition of self without belonging?” The questions she grapples with are as relevant to men as to women.
