Synopses & Reviews
”A gutsy, wholly original memoir of ragged grace and raw beauty.”Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)
From the memories of a childhood marked by extreme poverty, mental illness, and restrictive fundamentalist Christian rules, Janisse Ray crafted a memoir that has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings, no matter how humble, and fight for the places they love. This edition, published on the fifteenth anniversary of the original publication, updates and contextualizes the story for a new generation and a wider audience desperately searching for stories of empowerment and hope.
Janisse Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound travelers by hulks of old cars. In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, Ray redeems her home and her people, while also cataloging the source of her childhood hope: the Edenic longleaf pine forests, where orchids grow amid wiregrass at the feet of widely spaced, lofty trees. Today, the forests exist in fragments, cherished and threatened, and the South of her youth is gradually being overtaken by golf courses and suburban development. A contemporary classic, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a clarion call to protect the cultures and ecologies of every childhood.
Review
"The
forests of the southeast find their Rachel Carson . . . . In
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, part memoir, part clarion call to save the longleaf pine, she casts a loving but unflinching eye on growing up poor and fundamentalist in southeast Georgia.”
Anne Raver, New York Times
Suffused with the same history-haunted sense of loss that imprints so much of the South and its literature. What sets Ecology of a Cracker Childhood apart is the ambitious and arresting mission implied in its title. Ray's passion for preserving this unsung landscape is heartfelt and refreshing.”
Tony Horwitz, New York Times Book Review
The gorgeously written Ecology of a Cracker Childhood combines memoir and nature writing in such a way as to take the reader there, to the longleaf pine forests of south Georgia before it was all logged away.”
Bloomsbury Review, Editor's Favorite Books of 1999
Synopsis
Originally published in 2000,
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood redefined what nature writing could be, and who could write it. Selected as a
New York Times Notable Book, winner of numerous awards, and a perennial assignment for writing courses, the book is a contemporary classic. This 15th anniversary edition updates and recontextualizes the work for 2015.
Janisse Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound travelers by hulks of old cars. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood tells how a childhood spent in rural isolation living in the country but not even knowing how to swim grew into a passion to save the almost vanished longleaf pine ecosystem that existed before the region was ever called the South.
In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, Ray redeems two Souths. She shows the world perceived from a junkyard by a child reared in a fundamentalist religion with relatives as colorful as any character from fiction. She also catalogs the Edenic beauty of longleaf pine forests, where orchids grow amid wiregrass at the feet of widely spaced, lofty trees. Today, both worlds exist in fragments, cherished and threatened.
Synopsis
From the memories of a childhood marked by extreme poverty, mental illness, and restrictive fundamentalist Christian rules, Janisse Ray crafted a "heartfelt and refreshing" (New York Times) memoir that has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings, no matter how humble, and to fight for the places they love. This new edition updates and contextualizes the story for a new generation and a wider audience desperately searching for stories of empowerment and hope.
Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound travelers by hulks of old cars. In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, Ray redeems her home and her people, while also cataloging the source of her childhood hope: the Edenic longleaf pine forests, where orchids grow amid wiregrass at the feet of widely spaced, lofty trees. Today, the forests exist in fragments, cherished and threatened, and the South of her youth is gradually being overtaken by golf courses and suburban development.
A contemporary classic, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a clarion call to protect the cultures and ecologies of every childhood.
About the Author
Writer, naturalist and activist Janisse Ray is the author of six books of literary nonfiction and poetry. She has won the Southern Booksellers Award, the Southeastern Booksellers Award, and an American Book Award. Ray lives and works on a farm in Baxley, GA.