Minter’s reading was followed by welcoming remarks from President Martha E. “Farewell to the hill, look how far we’ve come / From the analyst to the actor, the future doctors to the diplomats / The engineers to the athletes, tell your story wherever you go,” he read. The recorded event, which will be available to the public on CornellCast in June, began with a reading from Laurence Minter ’21 of his poem, “History is Ours”: Gay’s address to the senior class touched on her childhood on her determination to be a writer in the face of constant rejection and doubts on the realities of “a flawed and unjust world” that rewards the mediocrity of the majority and punishes the marginalized and on her hopes for the graduating class.
Gay, a New York Times contributing opinion writer and visiting professor at Yale University, is the author of “Bad Feminist” (2014), the New York Times bestselling essay collection, as well as the 2014 novel “An Untamed State” and her 2017 memoir, “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.” She recently began her own publishing imprint, Roxane Gay Books, with publisher Grove Atlantic. Ryan Lombardi, vice president for student and campus life, delivers remarks at the close of the virtual Convocation ceremony. Credit: Lindsay France/Cornell University
