“My Father Poisoned Me” by Karen Felecia Nance

Description: “My great aunt Ora Inga Ray was killed by my great-grandfather on October 1, 1900, just shy of her 8th birthday. Ora was the second child of four children born into a biracial family living in Duluth, Minnesota. William Henry Ray, born in North Carolina in 1858, and Inga Nordquist Ray, born in Sweden in 1870 were her parents.  

“Between August and October of 1900, the Minnesota area experienced some of its wettest months in weather history I would like to think that Ora’s suffering and ultimate death resulted in the state of Minnesota forever weeping over her avoidable loss. Ora is resurrected, one hundred and twenty-one years later by all those who read her story”.

- Karen Felecia Nance

Ethel Ray: Living in the White, Gray, and Black by Karen Felecia Nance

This biography tells the story of Ethel Ray and her family during her younger years in the early 1900s before most of her great accomplishments. Ethel Ray depicts the trials she faced during her education in a mostly white environment, the tension between whiteness and Blackness that existed among her and her siblings’ search for identity, and perhaps most importantly, her family’s experience with the Duluth Lynchings in 1920. This book achieves all of this through journal entries, striking prose, haunting poetry, and chilling imagery of the history of violence that connects Ethel Ray’s early experience to today in Minnesota’s history.