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 Ecology of a Cracker Childhood - hardcover
by Janisse Ray
paperback
The scrubby forests of southern Georgia, dotting a landscape of low hills and
swampy bottoms, are not what many people would consider to be exalted country, the
sort of place to inspire lyrical considerations of nature and culture. Yet that is
just what essayist Janisse Ray delivers in her memorable debut, a memoir of life
in a part of America that roads and towns have passed by, a land settled by hardscrabble
Scots herders who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, and who bear the derogatory
epithet "cracker" with quiet pride.
Ray grew up in a junkyard outside what had been longleaf pine forest, an ecosystem
that has nearly disappeared in the American South through excessive logging. Her
family had little money, but that was not important; they more than made up for material
want through unabashed love and a passion for learning, values that underlie every
turn of Ray's narrative. She finds beauty in weeds and puddles, celebrates the ways
of tortoises and woodpeckers, and argues powerfully for the virtues of establishing
a connection with one's native ground.
"I carry the landscape inside like an ache," Ray writes. Her evocations
of fog-enshrouded woods and old ways of living are not without pain for all that
has been lost--but full of hope as well for what can be saved. -Amazon.com |
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The Creek
by J. T. Glisson, Foreword by Rip Torn |
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Totch: A Life in the Everglades
by Loren G. 'Totch' Brown |
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Gladesmen: Gator Hunters, Moonshiners,
and Skiffers (The Florida History and Culture Series)
by Glen Simmons, Laura Ogden |
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Crackers in the Glade: Life and Times
in the Old Evergaldes
by Rob Storter, Betty S. Briggs (Editor), Peter Matthiessen |
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Idella Parker: From Reddick to Cross
Creek
by Idella Parker
Idella: Marjorie Rawlings' 'Perfect
Maid'
by Idella Parker |
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Everglades Lawmen: True Stories of Game
Wardens in the Glades
by Jim Huffstodt, James T. Huffstodt |
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| Come to My Sunland: Letters of Julia
Daniels Moseley from the Florida Frontier, 1882-1886 (Florida History and Culture
Series) by Julia Daniels Moseley, Julia Winifred Moseley (Editor), Betty Powers Crislip
(Editor) |
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