As part of Women’s History Month, we’re sitting down with Virginia Tech Professor Lucinda Roy to hear her story of triumph. She is a novelist, poet and memoirist who has taught on three continents. Her most recent work is The Dreambird Chronicles. She’s currently working on an illustrated children’s book.
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There’s a moment from Lucinda Roy’s childhood that she can recall as if it had just happened yesterday. She remembers walking with her mother in the UK as a little girl, crying because of how cold she was. The piercing cold gripped Roy and felt like icicles pricking her skin. Her gloves had holes in the fabric, and she wore a pair of Wellington boots and thin socks that were no match for the frigid temperatures.
It was one of about four outfits that she had since her family couldn’t afford to buy her more clothes.
Times were hard.
“I was very poor growing up,” Roy explained. “We grew up on welfare essentially. It was hard until my mother could leave us alone when we were really young and go out and find work. Before that, we had to just exist on a kind of government subsidy. So I understood something about what it meant to struggle.”
She also remembers the icy stares she’d get from others while in public due to the color of her skin.
“This was in the 60s when I was growing up, and many people were not familiar with biracial children at all, and my father was Black, and my mother was white. And so, the N-word was thrown out a lot [to] myself and my brother and sister. It was quite dangerous at times too because there was such virulent racism.”
A story of triumph
Although difficult at the time, those challenging moments were only puzzle pieces to the vibrant life Roy leads today.
“I actually think [this] turned out to be a huge advantage because I think those people who have never had to struggle, when challenges do come up in their lives, they find it very difficult.”
Roy, who was born in South London, is now a distinguished professor at Virginia Tech and wears many hats: professor, novelist, poet, memoirist, mentor and wife.
The award-winning author has taught on three continents and is known for giving keynote speeches across the U.S. on race and gender, creative writing and education reform.
Some of her work includes No Right to Remain Silent: What We’ve Learned from the Tragedy at Virginia Tech, Lady Moses, Humming Birds and the Dreambird Chronicles trilogy, which is one of her most recent projects. Her latest novel is Flying the Coop, the second book in the trilogy.
She’s even been featured in a myriad of publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian and USA Today.
Roy says her ability to express herself through her craft means everything to her.
“It’s how I understand what I think about things. I often tell my students that we don’t really know what we believe until we’ve reflected upon it. And writing allows you to reflect upon things and decide how you see the world and what’s important to you, what you value most. So I feel as though every day when I sit down to write, I learn more about what’s going on in the world.”
Dream big
The life she lives today is one she’s dreamt of since she was a little girl. After all, dreaming was what helped her cope with the trials and tribulations she faced at a young age.
“Dreams are promises the imagination makes to itself,” she said, quoting her Dreambird Chronicles series. ”Unless you have an imagination, all you can see is what’s in front of you. In many ways, the imagination is the greatest antidote we have to despair.”
She continued, expressing how much she loves what she does, “I love teaching. I feel I have a vocation for teaching, so I’m not a college professor who teaches just to get the salary. I teach because I love to hear what the students are discovering, and I want to help them discover their own potency, their own power.”
In the end, she hopes she can inspire students to follow their own dreams, just as she did.
“I think my life’s purpose is to write and paint, but it’s also to be a mother and a teacher. Those things, to me, are so important. Overall, I would come back to my purpose being to cultivate hope. There are many miracles all around us that we often forget to see. I want us to see those things and be applauding and dancing together and saying, ‘this life is magnificent.’”
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