February 16, 1999		Author to Discuss Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape March 9 Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli
	Talk by author Charlotte Pierce-Baker: Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape Tuesday, March 9 12:20 p.m. Root Room Second Floor Carnegie Building 52 W. Lorain St. Free & open to the public Funded in part by a grant from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation: "Common Ground: Education for Democracy" For further information, contact Oberlin College News Services 440/775-8474		OBERLIN--Author Charlotte Pierce-Baker will discuss her critically-acclaimed book Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape on Tuesday, March 9 at Oberlin College. In Surviving the Silence, Charlotte Pierce-Baker tells her story and those of 10 other rape survivors and their loved ones. Clayton Koppes, dean of Oberlin's College of Arts and Sciences, describes Ms. Pierce-Baker's writing as "at once thoughtful and compelling" and cites this excerpt: "For Black women, where rape is concerned, race has preceded issues of gender. We are taught that we are first black, then women . . . Black women have survived by keeping quiet, not solely out of shame, but out of a need to preserve the race and its image. In our attempts to preserve racial pride, we black women have often sacrificed our souls. " Charlotte Pierce-Baker has taught at the University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was director of Innovative Study in Teaching and Humanities in the College of General Studies. She received a Ph.D. degree in speech and linguistics from Temple University. Her academic awards include a W.W. Smith postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctoral award for outstanding scholarship and service in university and community activities from the Iota Chapter of Phi Delta Gamma at Temple. The March 9 talk is one in a series of events sponsored by Oberlin College's Hewlett Committee to encourage discussion of campus pluralism.