A Reading from ‘Scholarship Boy’

← v19n2, Fall 2020

In September 2020, Larry I. Palmer, writer and retired law professor, read excerpts from his book Scholarship Boy: Meditations on Family and Race . This reading provides a snapshot of the terrain explored by the memoir. Palmer opens with a passage from the first chapter, “Get the Boy on the Train,” which is followed by later scenes in which he dances with his sister and graduates from Harvard.

family race memoir

Larry I. Palmer

Larry I. Palmer’s work has appeared in Law Touched Our Hearts: A Generation Remembers Brown v. Board of Education (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009) and New England Review . His essays “Urshel: The Beautiful Lost Sheep” and “The Haircut” were cited as notable essays in The Best American Essays 2017 and 2015 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). His professional work focused on health policy and bioethics, including Endings and Beginnings: Law, Medicine, and Society in Assisted Life and Death (Praeger, 2000) and Law, Medicine and Social Justice (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989). Palmer is an emeritus professor of law at Cornell University. Photo by Paige Stevens Photography