1. Bloom Fall 201516
Angela Marie Carter
is alone in a crowd
of people.
She stands on a modest stage
at the back corner of the Artful
Dodger coffeehouse and bar in
Harrisonburg. Two microphones
are angled to befit her 5-foot-5-
inch frame, while a trio of dim
strobe lights cast a gentle aura
against her.
One-hundred and fifty locals
packed into the Dodger’s tight
quarters — some standing, some
sitting on the floor — to hear the
local poet.
Angela wears a dark, sleeveless
shirt exposing her arms; sprawled
vertically down her left shoulder
is a tattoo that reads, “Don’t listen to
the lie.” She says that it’s a re-
minder that the negative thoughts
that flood her mind on occasion
are just an element of her illness.
She takes time out of each day to
gaze at the message.
“My name is Angela Carter,”
she announces to the crowd, “and
I suffer with severe depression. I
was abused as a child, and that is
something that follows me
through my entire life.”
The audience surrenders to si-
lence.
“I can already see people
shuffling,” she says aloud, gestur-
ing toward a group at the back
corner of the room who tense up
at the mere mention of a subject
many deem taboo. “That’s called
stigma, by the way. Stigma. And
that’s what I’m against. I’m on a
vendetta against stigma.”
As she stands on stage, Angela
looks larger than life, carrying a
confidence she has spent years
trying to regain. This is her sanc-
tuary. She casts her wide, choco-
late eyes toward the crowd and
begins spilling out the thoughts
she concealed for so long.
This is her time.
‘Harrisonburg is home’
Angela Carter loves restaurants
that remind her of home, and
nothing reminds her of home
more than the Thomas House
Restaurant in Dayton.
The decades-old southern-
style restaurant is often filled with
easygoing locals. They socialize
for hours at a time in a “back in
my day” candor, talking about the
local news, catching up with
friends they haven’t seen in a
while, or meeting soon-to-be
friends over a meal of chicken and
dumplings.
“You get the country people
coming in telling their stories,
most of them will talk to com-
plete strangers,” says Angela, 33,
sitting in a back corner booth in
the restaurant on a gray Septem-
ber morning. “There’s some-
thing about someone you don’t
know interacting with you, or
hearing people around you with
the accents and the food and
just sort of ... I feel like I’m
back in time, when I was grow-
ing up.”
She was born Angela
Hawthorne, raised in Alberta, Va.,
a 2.1-square-mile community nes-
tled a half-hour north of the
North Carolina border, home to
fewer than 300 residents.
But Angela had dreams that
extended far beyond the confines
of her hometown.
In 2000, she took her first
plane ride ever to Bath, Somerset,
in Southwest England, after re-
ceiving a scholarship from South-
side Virginia Community College
ARTICLE BY MATT GONZALES | PHOTOGRAPHY BY HOLLY MARCUS
See CARTER, Page 18
‘Survival is a full-time job’
Angela Carter uses poetry to shine a light on mental illness, abuse
RIGHT: Angela Carter
reads her poems at a
poetry slam at the
Artful Dodger on
Sept. 15. Her tattoo,
“Don't listen to the
lie,” is a phrase told to
her by a counselor that
she says she takes time
to look at every day.
3. Bloom Fall 201518
to study abroad. She studied
British literature and European
business culture at the University
of Bath shortly after.
Angela’s not-in-Kansas-
anymore moment came quickly,
when she realized her family and
friends were thousands of miles
behind her.
“Looking back, it was probably
a very stupid thing for me to do,”
says Angela, laughing at the mem-
ory. “I was on my own and didn’t
know anybody, other than one
person I met while I was studying
there.”
That person, James Carter,
worked as a manager for an insur-
ance agency at the University of
Bath. Eleven months later, he
would become her husband.
“I remember seeing this beau-
tiful girl at the halls of the resi-
dents, and I beckoned her down,”
said James Carter, 39, who was
born and raised on the limestone
hills of Bath, evidenced by his
smooth English accent. “We
talked for an hour and a half, and
later that night, I told my mum
about this lovely, beautiful Ameri-
can whose name I couldn’t re-
member, talking about how nice
she was.”
A week later, Angela entered
his office and asked him out on a
date.
As the saying goes, the rest is
history.
They would marry and have
two girls, Eve, now 10, and Nori,
8, each of whom share their
mother’s brown hair and smile.
The couple then moved to Har-
risonburg in 2006 after passing
through the Friendly City during
their delayed honeymoon trip to
Boston.
“We didn’t know anything
about Harrisonburg [before the
relocation],” admits Angela. “We
stopped by and enjoyed our time,
everyone just seemed so friendly.
We didn’t do a whole lot of re-
search but decided to move here
anyways. That’s just the type of
people we are.”
The move was spontaneous,
but the challenges the Carter fam-
ily faced on their arrival were real.
Strugglingtokeepupwithmount-
ing bills and rent, the Carters lived
below the poverty line for years.
Angela started out as a stay-at-
home mother while James worked
full time as a gifts and records of-
ficer at James Madison University.
With time, the Carters gained
ground. Angela received a schol-
arship to attend Eastern Mennon-
ite University and eventually be-
came a human resources manager
for Beam Brothers Trucking in
Mount Crawford, a position she
left in 2013. James would become
the director of development and
design at Immerge Technologies
in downtown Harrisonburg.
The Carters are a very close-
knit family who like to explore
everything the Valley has to offer,
whether picking berries in the
summertime, biking at Hillandale
Park, enjoying a show at Court
Square Theater, or feasting on
fried Oreos at Jack Brown’s Beer
and Burger Joint.
“We love wandering down-
town and bumping into someone
or striking up a conversation with
a stranger,” says James Carter.
“Harrisonburgreallyisourhome.”
Angela hasn’t forgotten when
herfamilyhadonlyenoughmoney
to pay their bills and put food on
the table and not much else. If
anything,thosearduousyearshave
strengthened the bond she and
James share and have forged a
greater sense of family pride.
“Sometimes I think about how
everything aligned, from that first
plane ride all the way to now, and
I can’t help but smile,” she says.
“Sometimes I wonder what would
have happened if things went dif-
ferently.”
She pauses for a few seconds,
gathers her thoughts and then
continues.
“The thing is, people say not to
think about what would have hap-
pened, but the fact of the matter
is, I know what would have hap-
pened.”
■ ■ ■
‘We love wandering downtown and bumping into someone’
Photos by Holly Marcus
Poet Angela Carter stands with her husband, James, and daughters, Eve, 10, and Nori, 8, at their home in
Harrisonburg. The couple moved to the city in 2006 after passing through during their delayed honeymoon
trip to Boston.
See CARTER, Page 19
Carter FROM PAGE 16
4. Fall 2015 Bloom 19
“
D
o you hear me
world? I’m not
done yet.”
Angela Carter fills the Artful
Dodger with sounds of her past,
herpainemanatingfromhervoice.
“No, I won’t sit down,” she
reads aloud. “No, I refuse to hide
my earned frown. My tongue
hardened into a hammer. And you
keep on feeding me nails as I’m
trying to speak the truth.”
Several members of the crowd
shout fleeting messages of sup-
port, from “Wooo!” to “Go girl!”
Carter doesn’t break stride. The
momentum of her words contin-
ues to build.
“I’m not done living, lady. Liv-
ing is a moving goal. If your heart
ain’t aching, it must not be whole,”
she proudly shouts.
“If youcan’tstomachmystory,
imagine it were you.”
‘The person I always
wanted to be’
Angela Carter cannot pinpoint
the moment when she fell in love
with poetry, though she knows it
came in the first 10 years of her
life.
In her first memory of writing
poetry, she was 8 years old. She
would pencil stanzas on an anti-
quated lamp shade her grand-
mother once owned and erase
them afterward. She then moved
on to the interior of her bedroom
closet, a strategy that would keep
others from reading her thoughts.
She says that she would also
document her poems on a tape
recorder, hiding the tapes behind
seldom-used books on a book-
shelf.
“[Poetry] kept me going,” says
Angela. “I did not have a good
childhood,sothatwasmyescape.”
Around this time, Angela says,
she became a victim of sexual
abuse. The abuse, she says, trig-
gered the development of severe
depression,whichshecontinuesto
battle today, and it affected her in
many other ways growing up.
As a teenager, she says, she
lost the ability to trust those
around her, peers and family
members. She wasn’t comfort-
able in her own skin. She could
not stand the sight of herself in
the mirror. She didn’t like the
person she had become and
lacked self-confidence.
“When you’re abused, your
whole world is different than what
it was before,” she says. “Whether
it happens one time or 100 times,
it is still damaging.”
Angela now distills her past
intoherpoetry,whichcontinuesto
be her cathartic outlet; it is a vehi-
cle that affords her the opportu-
nity to express her feelings and
share her past with others.
Two years ago, she took this
endeavor a step further.
She now shares her works with
local audiences through live
Angela Carter, at her home in Harrisonburg, can’t pinpoint the moment when she fell in love with poetry but knows it came in the first 10 years of her life.
See CARTER, Page 20
Carter FROM PAGE 18
5. Bloom Fall 201520
1115799
2 x 2.5
DUTCHWAY FENCE
BLOOM EIGHTH PAGE
Ad Sales 18
FULL
1115309
2 x 2.5
REBECCA'S WELL CRAFTS & GIFTS
BLOOM EIGHTH PAGE
Ad Sales 35
1115277
2 x 2.5
PARKSIDE FAMILY DENTISTRY
BLOOM
Ad Sales 83
1114727
2 x 2.5
KITCHEN KUPBOARD
BLOOM
Ad Sales 35
readings. This eventually led to
speaking engagements around the
country at venues like the KGB
Bar and Lit Journal in Manhattan,
and Busboys and Poets in Arling-
ton.
“When I’m on stage, I feel like
thepersonIhavealwayswantedto
be,” she says. “And there’s an im-
mense happiness wherever I’m at
before I get onstage … and I feel
proud of what I’m doing.”
There are some, how-
ever, who disagree with An-
gela’s decision to speak with
such openness. Over the years,
she says, she’s heard people say
things like:
“Making other people think about
[abuse] doesn’t make the world better; it
only makes them feel down.”
“I feel sorry for you, but maybe you
should let it go.”
“Why would you bring your children
to a reading?”
“Keep private matters private.”
She recalls situations in which
audience members have ques-
tioned her motives or made their
own displeasure with the subject
matter blatantly apparent.
“Whenever that happens, I
will say, ‘I realize you’re uncom-
fortable, I can see it in your
body language. But just under-
stand how hard this must have
been on me, to go half my life
being told I couldn’t talk about
these things. And you are here,
a part of me changing that.’”
When she first began these
readings, an unreceptive audi-
ence would have been over-
whelmingly discouraging for
Angela. Those who scowl at her
while she’s on stage or storm out
of the room mid-reading would
have caused her to “die inside”
or “feel so low and not ac-
cepted,” she says.
But that was in the past.
Constant repetition and en-
couragement from her husband,
who was a regular attendee in
those earlier days, helped her
through these difficult moments.
“I would look into the crowd
and find him,” explains Angela.
“He was the only person I knew
who had my back, and I couldn’t
have done it without him.”
The support she received from
James during those early perform-
ances buoyed her confidence —
not necessarily by anything James
said, but rather simply by making
his presence felt. She would look
his way, and the unspoken lines of
communication would inspire her
to push through.
“Seeing her up on the stage
being that strong, being able to
read those words, that makes me
very proud,” said James Carter.
“She’s a great role model for our
children — to go on stage and
perform in front of those peo-
ple.”
The Carters allows Eve and
Nori to attend certain readings,
See CARTER, Page 21
Carter FROM PAGE 19
‘Seeing her up on
the stage ... that
makes me very
proud’
6. Fall 2015 Bloom 21
1115115
4 x 5
SHEN WOMENS HEALTHCARE
BLOOM HALF PAGE
Ad Sales 35
FULL
so long the subject matter is
suitable. Angela refuses to hide
her past from her children and
remains very upfront with them
about her struggles with depres-
sion to this day.
“Some people say that I
shouldn’t talk about this with my
kids,” she says. “But think of
how different my life would
have been if people would have
talked to me at those ages.”
The love she has for her two
energetic girls is beyond com-
prehension and can be seen in
the most subtle of interactions.
Each time she lays eyes on her
children, it is as if for the first
time, while embracing them as if
for the last.
“My children are so under-
standing and caring,” she says,
with a warm smile. “When they
attend my performances, they sit
up front and are so happy to see
me. They even create signs that
say ‘We like your poetry,
Mama.’”
Another person who enjoys
Angela’s work is Terry Whit-
more, who was an instructor for
the adult education completion
program at Eastern Mennonite
University for 19 years.
Whitmore remembers meet-
ing Angela in 2009, whom he
described as very shy student.
Many of his classes employed
small group interactions and the
sharing of life experience, an at-
mosphere in which Angela was
not as comfortable expressing
herself.
“I was extremely depressed
sometimes when I went in
there,” recalls Angela.
Whitmore, however, helped
her through that difficult time.
The two had countless personal
conversations where he would
offer words of inspiration and
encourage Angela to use her
negative life experiences to her
advantage.
So when he now sees her up
on stage, spilling her heart out to
audiences, he cannot help but
feel pride for his former student.
“The first time I attended a
reading,itbroughtmeto tears,”he
says. “She really shared her stream
of experiences, and that takes a
tremendous amount of courage
— a tremendous amount. I’m
very, very proud of her.”
Angela’s words also have af-
fected many audience members,
some of whom she says are reluc-
tant to voice their own abusive
pasts.
“I’ll get thank you notes or
Facebook messages at least
twice a week,” says Angela, who
calls these communications
“amazing.” She says she rarely
imparts advice as she continues
to “try to figure things out for
myself.”
The words of encourage-
ment she has received and the
private stories told by others jux-
tapose all of the criticism re-
ceived over the years. As Angela
says, the effect her words have
on those who are enduring their
own abusive situations is what
keeps her driven.
“I always say to people,
within a one-block radius of
your home, there’s going to be
at least four people that have
been abused and probably more
See CARTER, Page 22
Carter FROM PAGE 20
7. Bloom Fall 201522
than that have some sort of men-
tal illness,” she says.
“I’m doing this for them.”
■ ■ ■
Blake Cramer, guitarist for the
Harrisonburg-based bluegrass
band Shenandoah Alley, joins An-
gela on stage, toting an acoustic-
electric guitar and a somber
expression. He begins gently
strumming in A minor. A dark,
gloomy sound fills the room, serv-
ing as the backdrop for Angela’s
rhythmic cadence.
“There are more haters of
mental illness than a recession
has $2-an-hour waiters — but I’ll
give my haters a tip or two,” she
exclaims, which once again draws
light cheering from the crowd.
“You can do that mean you do,
and you can do while you kiss my
weirdo ass too, because you ain’t
the first to call me crazy, and I’ll
be damned if I’m going to be-
come weak just because you
hope I do.”
Angela stares into the crowd as
if it’s littered with the images of
her critics, those who prematurely
force on her a label before actually
takingtimetohearwhatshehasto
say.
“Yes, I’ve been a patient in a
hospital, and I take six pills a day,
but I’d rather be depressed than
hurtful and ignorant any day. I’m a
modern-day leper; my crazy is
gonna fall off and be caught.
“They spend more energy try-
ing to run away instead of asking
me what it means to have survived
or fought.”
Silence is not golden
Angela’s poetry has not gone
unnoticed to those whose jobs are
to recognize exceptional work.
In 2014, she published her first
book of memoirs, “Memory
Chose A Woman’s Body,” a 94-
page collection of poems that
spotlights the effects of silence
afteranabusivepast,forwhichshe
was nominated for a Virginia Li-
braryLiteracy Award. In 2014, she
was nominated for the Pushcart
Prize, an American literary recog-
nition bestowed by the Pushcart
Press, for her poem, “Woman at
the Auction House.”
See CARTER, Page 25
Carter FROM PAGE 21In 2014, Carter published her first
book of memoirs, “Memory Chose A
Woman’s Body,” a collection of
poems for which she
was nominated for a Virginia
Library Literacy Award.
Photo by Holly Marcus
8. Fall 2015 Bloom 23
sophistication without the cum-
merbund.
Uniform-like skirts and match-
ingjacketsorblouses wereallover
the streets of New York Fashion
Week. Patteson has a few in her
storethatshejustcan’tkeeponthe
racks.
“It’s cool and it’s interesting,
but the best thing about it is you
can wear it as an outfit or you can
wear it with something else,” she
said. “So you get a lot of diff uses
out of one particular look.”
The ever-important simple
white blouse has seen multiple
renditionsthisseason,aseither the
structured, masculine button-
down, or softened with Victorian
lace, ruffles and peter pan collars.
And of course, with the sim-
ple, preppy style of Bluetique and
the goal of selling clothes that
women will want to wear for sev-
eral seasons, the white blouse is a
staple in the store, according to
Patteson.
“We have more drapier kinds,
not necessarily the tailored kinds,
but they’re always great basics to
have,” she said. “They never go
out of style and there’s like 10,000
different ways to use them.”
As for the feet, while riding
boots are still a great casual look,
this fall brings boot trends from
opposite ends of the spectrum,
with short booties and thigh-high
over-the-knee boots.
While short booties run the
gamut of styles, suede boho style
and black biker booties seem to
be the most popular, according to
Patteson.
For those daring enough to try
the over-the-knee boot trend, Pat-
teson says the trend can be done
appropriately with a balanced
outfit.
“It’s like the rule of wearing
something risqué,” she said. “You
want to make sure that the rest of
you is paired down.”
Patteson recommends wear-
ing the daring boot without
showing any skin and dressing
down the rest of the ensemble.
“With those kinds of things,
you probably want to keep either
tights or a high-neckline so it’s not
looking quite so ‘Pretty Woman,’”
she said. “Over-the-knee boots
are a very dramatic piece, and you
want your focal point to be on
your boots, so everything else is
paired down to focus on your
boots.”
But no matter the current
trends, the one thing Patteson
says she’s seeing again and again
is that consumers are increasingly
concerned with comfort and
looking for clothing to fill those
needs.
“Everyone seems to be going
more toward the comfortable,
which is fantastic because it’s like
wearing your pajamas except it
looks cute,” she said. “It makes it
easy to get dressed without wor-
rying about squirming and read-
justing.”
And the trends on the runway
mirror that ideal.
Structured suits now more
closely resemble pajama sets than
something worn to a black-tie af-
fair, and the “normcore” trends
are still seen on the streets in
force.
Normcore is a term that de-
picts the idea of “normal style,”
which embodies self-aware, styl-
ized blandness.
Even the A-listers are donning
simple, clean basics with the atti-
tude of deliberately embracing
sameness as the new cool, instead
of endeavoring to be different or
authentic.
“Today’s consumer right now
is less worried about that because
everyone is so busy. They’re wor-
ried about being comfortable and
not thinking about it too hard,”
Patteson said. “It’s all about
knowing you and
what you’re comfort-
able with, what looks
good on you.”
‘Everyone seems to be going more toward the comfortable’
Photos by Nikki Fox
ABOVE: Abby
Bremerton, a junior
at JMU, 20, wears
an olive suede dress
($67), a scarf ($26)
and suede boots
($42) from
Bluetique. While
riding boots are still
a great casual look,
this fall boasts boot trends on opposite ends of the spectrum, with short
booties and thigh-high over-the-knee boots.
RIGHT: A blanket scarf ($26) and a semi-precious gemstone
necklace ($36) from Bluetique.
History FROM PAGE 13
10. Fall 2015 Bloom 25
1116255
2 x 5
BLAKEMORE FLOWERS
BLOOM- BLAKEMORE
Ad Sales 17
FULL
1116719
2 x 5
HAWK SECURITY SYSTEMS INC
BLOOM
Ad Sales 35
Local author and friend Shirley
Showalter remains unsurprised by
the positive reception.
“She’s a good storyteller,” says
Showalter.“Forbeingayoungper-
son, she has lived a lot, and she’s
always full of stories.”
While flattering, Angela says
she does not strive for the honors
and recognitions. She says her
work is intended to establish
awareness for those who have
beenabusedorthosewhomaylive
with a mental illness.
She also vows to tear down a
long-lasting stigma that continues
to affect many people today.
“I happen to know that there
are people out there that now talk
about their stories because they
went to one of my shows,” says
Angela. “If I can’t change the
things in my life, if I can’t change
thefactthatIwasabused,if Ican’t
change the negative occurrences
and the depression, what better
thing can I ask for than at least
leading a handful of people into
changing their own lives?”
She hopes her performances
will inspire those shamed into si-
lence to break out of their shell
and share their own abusive
pasts. Doing so will not only
bring about this awareness, she
says, but may inspire others to
do the same.
As she says: Silence is not
golden.
“I don’t see a single thing we
gain by not talking about it,” she
says. “Constantly keeping secrets
and remaining scared to say the
wrong things; it doesn’t help any-
thing at all.”
Angela adamantly maintains
that those who live with a mental
illness are not looking for a solu-
tion. She understands she may
grapple with depression for years
to come. But she wants the world
to know that people like her, those
who may live with a mental illness
after difficult childhoods, are not
defined by this epidemic.
“I’m not crazy,” she says, “I’m
coping. And I stick by that.”
■ ■ ■
“
D
o you hear me,
world? I’m not
leaving yet.”
Through 15 minutes of read-
ings, the crowd remains as still as
the Harrisonburg night, their eyes
locked on Angela throughout the
duration of her poetry reading.
Some viewers are visibly shaken,
some watch with eyes filled with
emotion. Others look with aston-
ishment, as if admiring the brav-
ery of a woman who, despite her
poignant past, continues to wake
up each morning, continues to ex-
press empathy, continues to look
for the good in those around her.
“I’m the thunder before the
lightening. I’m that silenced girl,
speaking. I’m the abused, publicly
weeping. I’m the bullied, with
arms up against the next strike,”
she continues, her voice stretching
thinner with every word.
“Turns out fading memories
don’t mean the pain is through.
But I’ll live, because if I could
learn to love my own self, I can
learn to accept you.
“I’m not done surviving lady,”
she says, before encapsulating her
message into a single sentence,
emphasizing each word:
“Survival is a full-time job.”
Angela Carter steps away from
the microphone, wipes her damp-
ened eyes and descends the stage,
holding up her chin.
The crowd roars in
applause.
Carter FROM PAGE 22
