Author to discuss “growing up black and Catholic in New Orleans”

Author: Shannon Roddel

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Jo Anne Tardy, author ofA Light will Rise in the Darkness: Growing up Black and Catholic in New Orleans, will deliver a talk titledTranscending Boundariesat 7:30 p.m. Monday (Oct. 23) in the Hammes Student Lounge of the Coleman-Morse Center at the University of Notre Dame.The talk is free and open to the public.

Released last month from ACTA Publications, the book recounts Tardys experiences growing up in the 1940s and 1950s inNew Orleansas a young, black Catholic.From the funeral parades playing dirges that rolled down her street, to her close relationship with the Holy Family nuns at her school, Tardy describes a vibrant, emotional and exciting city in which her sense of spirituality developed. She also includes a brief reflection on her old neighborhood in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of Notre Dame, stated in the books foreword:This is a book that students of Catholicism at Notre Dame and in schools around the country should read before they graduate if they want to understand the Catholicism that has shaped the generations before them and the country in which they live."

Tardy, whose son, Melvin, is an advisor and faculty member in Notre Dames First Year of Studies, also will sign copies of her book at the main branch of the South Bend Public Library from3:30to4:40 p.m.Monday (Oct. 23).

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