Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
Janisse Ray's memoir ties a childhood in a junkyard to the environmental consciousness that led her toward preserving the longleaf pine forests of the South. It reads as one life story shaped by both place and loss.
Work Information
From a childhood in a junkyard, the book looks back toward a disappearing forest.
The book gathers poverty, religious constraint, family history, and forest loss into a single narrative that revisits the relation between self and nature. It is both nature writing and a cultural argument about responsibility to place.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Milkweed Editions
- Published
- 1999-09-10
- Pages
- 285 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.61 x 4.45 x 21.59 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781571312341
- ISBN-10
- 157131234X
- Price
- 18541 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Science/Earth Sciences/Ecology
Chronicles the author's childhood in the rural forests of Georgia, her fundamentalist upbringing, and her battle to save the longleaf pine ecosystem of Florida and Georgia.
A native of the coastal plains of southern Georgia, author Janisse Ray grew up in a junkyard. Her book, "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" (Milkweed 1999), a unique combination of memoir and natural history, captures two Souths--the cracker south and the longleaf south--both vanishing and both worthy of remembrance. A naturalist and environmental activist, Ray has participated in The Orion Society's Forgotten Language Tour. She has published essays and poems in magazines and newspapers such as "Georgia Wildlife", "Orion", "Wild Earth", "Tallahassee Democrat", "Missoula Independent", "Florida Wildlife", "Hope", and "Florida Naturalist". Ray is a regular contributor to Peach State Public Radio. Ray's chapbook of poetry "Naming the Unseen" won the 1996 Merriam-Frontier Award from the University of Montana, where she earned a graduate degree in creative writing. She has also been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets' College Prize Honorable Mention, a Writers Conferences & Festivals Nonfiction Award, a first place prize in the Camas Nature Writing Contest, and a first place prize in the Snake Nation Review Poetry Competition, among others. Ray currently lives in a farmhouse in Baxley, Georgia, with her son.
Reviews
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Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
"Write about what you know," is an old axiom for would-be authors. Janisse Ray takes this to heart in "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood." Part autobiography and childhood memoir and part an ecology of plants and animals, this is a wonderful tale that successfully blends both. Janisse Ray is writing about what she knows best. The human dimension to her tale is a tale of growing up with her family in the natural world. The family home sits in the middle of a junkyard along old Route 1 in southeastern Georgia in a forest of longleaf pine. It is a coming of age story, where she is clearly destined for a horizon beyond the junkyard in the pines. She is solidly grounded in her childhood environment, low on the affluence scale, but one which has prepared her well for life. "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" conveys a great sense of place and will give the reader a newfound respect for a forest of longleaf pine. I bought this book at the Visitor Center at the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, not all that far from Baxley, Georgia. I am glad they stocked it in the store. Reading this put me on to "Pinhook," her next work which I also recommend.
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A warm, friendly read which opens up a once ...
A warm, friendly read which opens up a once closed childhood to the world, and leaves it to blossom in a very clear and well written style which explores the author's history as well as the nature of her childhood environment.
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Two books in One
Thoroughly enjoyable and educational. Every other chapter is about the endangered longleaf pine which once stretched from Viginia to Louisiana. The true identy and origin of the term Cracker is explained clearly for the first time. Also embedded in the chapters not about the longleaf pine is a long and continuing observation and explanation about mental illness. The passage written by her mentally ill father describing his view of his illness is quite powerful. For me it gave new insight into the state of Georgia and the settlers in the southern portion. I was initially dreading it would go overboard on ecology but the balance she seems to show between human and plant life kept me reading.
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One of My New Favorite Books
I am rarely so moved by the beauty of a book as to shed tears; I can count the number of books that have affected me that way on one hand. This is one of them (another is Illumination in the Flatwoods, another north Florida/south Georgia book). The chapter "written" by Audubon to Bachman while in heaven (with St. Francis and millions of Carolina parakeets present) just did me in with its beauty. I am in awe of Ray's skill as a writer; she is obviously both a naturalist and a poet. But what stands out the most for me about this book is the love. I'm not sure if I've ever seen in a memoir so much love, between the parents, from the parents for the children, and from Ray for her parents, as well, of course, as for the long leaf pine ecosystem. The amount and sheer force of the love in this book reminds me of Angela's Ashes. It doesn't get much better than this.
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Amazing
Such an impactful book. My students LOVED it!!