Janisse Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from
Florida-bound travelers by the hedge at the edge of the road and by
hulks of old cars, stacks of blown-out tires, and primeval jumbles of
rusted metal. 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.
Quotes:
"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.... Sometimes a book is so
powerful, it holds its writer hostage.”—Anne Raver, New York Times
“Ray's
memoir combines her love of nature, particularly the longleaf South,
with her environmental activism."—Pam Kingsbury, TimesDaily
"[University
of Mississippi] students were very moved by these two memoirs, by the
intertwining of Ray's troubled family history with the troubled history
of the longleaf pine system in Georgia.... She has a poetic, passionate
way of making us respect her home.”—Mentioned in the Oxford Eagle, Identical
article in the Daily Corinthian, Jennifer Southall
“[Ecology of a
Cracker Childhood] is a curious blend of memoir and natural history,
putting Ray's distinctive South Georgia earth-girl stamp on the genre
of Wendell Berry and Rick Bass.”—ajc.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution
on the WEB)
"Her book . . ., a unique combination of memoir and
natural history, captures two vanishing souths, the ‘cracker' south and
the ‘long-leaf' south.”—Watertown Daily Times
“Ray's prose is graceful and unhuried, yet to the point.”—Grist Magazine
“Part
memoir part natural history essay, Janisse Ray's wonderful first book
is grounded in a concrete sense of place."—Calyx Journal
“[Ecology of a Cracker Childhood] is a book with a mission.”—ajc.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the Web)
"Ray's
genre-busting look melds subjects and styles to create an unusually
moving document of life—human and otherwise—on the coastal plains of
South Georgia.... The author writes about nature as lovingly and as
effectively as she does the ups and downs of her struggling clan....
Consider the effectiveness of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood as an
argument for all of us to think beyond our lives.” —Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
“The language is marvelous, it's
accessibleto readers of all ages, and it touches class and race in a
way that seems good and enlightening.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Janisse
Ray has written a beautiful book that weaves the story of her
cloistered upbringing in Baxley, Georgia, with the tragic history of
the southeastern pine forests. Ecology Of A Cracker Childhood is really
an anthem to the longleaf pine tree, or ‘heart pine' as it is commonly
known. It should be dear to the hearts of Savannahians.”—Bill Modell,
Creative Loafing
“Janisse Ray has given us a gift with Ecology of
a Cracker Childhood, a sometimes raw, often gently eloquent memoir of
her childhood in a southern Georgia scrapyard.... This is like the
best of Annie Dillard and Dorothy Allison combined, an explication not
only of an endangered ecosystem, but also of a family system reigned by
great love, keen intelligence, and sporadic mental illness.”—Boulder
Weekly
“Ray magically conveys the need for conservation
juxtaposed with the perverse beauty of the wasteland of her youth. In
Janisse Ray, the region has found a worthy and eloquent advocate,
perhaps a savior for its hundreds of endangered species.”—E-The
Environmental Magazine
“A child grows up poor in a junkyard in
Baxley, GA, and writes a terrific book about her life, her family, and
the ecology of the longleaf pines.”—Florida Times-Union
“Seamlessly
weaving memories of her poverty-stricken childhood with musings about
the destruction of the longleaf pine forests that once blanketed
Georgia, Ray creates a tapestry of the landscape she carries ‘inside
like an ache.' She deftly spins the connections, offering what she has
learned: That her personal story is inseparable from the story of her
land.” —Linda O'Quinn, Post and Courier
“What makes Ecology of a
Cracker Childhood successful is [the] wonder that grows in the junkyard
during her childhood, and anger that emerges much later in the forest.”—Rick Van Noy, The Roanoke Times
“Every page of her book is
equally vivid, whether she's describing the South Georgia junkyard
where she grew up or the longleaf pine forests of today.”—Sharon
Rauch, Tallahassee Democrat
“[Ray's] tale of growing up poor and
white in backwoods Georgia is 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 lament for a lost
landscape and a lost way of life centers on a South that has little to
do with cotillions, columned mansions or cotton plantations.... Ray's
passion for preserving this unsung landscape is heartfelt and
refreshing.”—Tony Horwitz, New York Times Book Review
“The
South's Rachel Carson.... Janisse Ray has written a moving and
important book. Her voice needs to be heard.”—(Greensboro, NC) News
& Record
“This biography of family and place is tied together
like all things made of water, carbon, and nitrogen. Ray reminds us
that we are all living things, inextricably mixed with our
environment.”—Glenda Burnside, Bloomsbury Review
“In this
seamless blend of nature writing and memoir, Ray captures the essence
of a unique place and people—and the complex, compromised relationship
that all Americans have with the natural world.... She writes
poignantly and movingly about herself and her colorful kin, and equally
so about the red cockaded woodpecker, the gopher tortoise, the indigo
snake and the flatwoods salamander. In the over-tilled fields of memoir
and nature writing, Ray has conjured a joyous green shoot of a book.”—Michael Swindle, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Ray's descriptions of the idyllic forests capture their beauty.... The stories are enthralling.”—(Durham) Herald-Sun
“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
“By pursuing
empathy and understanding instead of a raging blame, Ray's assessment
of the white settlers of the Southeast remains tough without being
bitter.... Thanks to such honesty, her wish for a new legacy arrives
not as an exercise in delusion but as a glimpse of the sublime.... In
this time of unparalleled cynicism, any writer cabable of imagining
Paradise rebuilt on the ruins of a junkyard ought to command our
attention, if not our humble gratitude.”—Philip Connors, Newsday
“More
than her passion for the wilderness, her activism or her outrage, it is
her capacity for wonder that wins us to her fervent environmentalism—a
capacity born and bred, ironically, not in the college biology lab or
the naturalist's notebook but in the brier patch of a junkyard adrift
with car guts, old lawn mowers, broken glass.”—Amy Godine, Orion
“Prose
that's a treat to ear and tongue alike.... Ray's redemptive story of an
impovershed childhood brings to mind the novels of Dorothy Allison and
the nature writing of Amy Blackmarr, but the stunning voice and vision
are hers alone.... Precise, illuminating, and striking.... Moving
easily between the cast-off ugliness of the junkyard and the majesty of
old-growth forest, she finds ample beauty in each.”—Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
“Janisse Ray knows that her region's story and
her own story are inseperable; in many ways they are the same story. To
tell that story as well as she tells it here is at once to show what
has gone wrong and to light the way ahead. This book, clearly, is only
a beginning. It is well done and is very moving.”—Wendell Berry
“Every edangered ecosystem should have such an eloquent spokesman.”—Bailey White
”One
theme of this smart book hit me particularly hard: there are no
wastelands on this planet, only places that could regain some of the
balance and beauty that lies not so far in their past.”—Bill McKibben
“My
students were very moved by these two memoirs, by the intertwining of
Ray's troubled family history with the troubled history of the longleaf
pine system in Georgia.... She has a poetic, passionate way of making us
respect her home.”—Daily Corinthian, quote from Prof. Joan Wylie Hall,
University of Mississippi
“What impresses me most about this
astonishing book is the seamless interweaving of personal memior and
natural history—an interweaving the more remarkable in view of the
jolting differences between the junkyard of the author's childhood and
what is left of the natural landscape of her beloved south Georgia. ”—Jim Kilgo, author of Deep Enough for Ivorybills
“In a blend of
memoir and nature writing, Ray explores our complex relationship with
nature against the backdrop of the junk yard where she grew up and the
vanishing longleaf pine forests of southern Georgia.”—Erin Murphy
Sanders, Trenton Times
“Janisse Ray is a role model for countless future rural writers to come.”—Wes Jackson
“Janisse Ray is a strong and imaginative writer.”—Peter Matthiessen
“A
compelling dimension of Ray's work is her scrupulous attentiveness to
the human spirit.”—Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice
“Originally
published in 2000, this memoir of an impoverished childhood got a
second life this year when the Georgia Center for the Book chose it as
the title for the All Georgia Reading the Same Book program.” —Tray
Butler, Creative Loafing
"On the cover of Ecology of a Cracker
Childhood, Janise Ray
is touted as the Rachel Carson of the Southeast.
Such a statement is not far off the mark, but it does not tell enough
about this unusual memoir. Ray, a self-described 'cracker,' grew up in
the flat, humid wiregrass of the South Georgia coastal plain. Her
parents claimed they found her on a bed of pine needles
under 'bayonet-tipped palmetto fronds' in their junkyard(p.6). (para) .
. . She uses a structure of alternating chapters on her life and the
ecological history of her region. As memoir this reinforces the sense
that humans are intertwined with the environment as she connects
personal experience with changes in the landscape. She provides a
respectful but critical insider's view of significant themes of
Southern history: poverty, religion, cracker culture, and the
transformative power of education. (para) This impressionistic book
demonstrates that the Muir branch of environmental writing is alive and
well. Nature is important in and of itself, but humans learn and are
bettered from communing in and with it. All this fits in very well with
Milkweed Edition's mission of publishing works on the intimate
connection of humans and the natural world. (para) Ecology of a Cracker
Childhood is a stirring work that can benefit any reader. Because it
covers an often over-looked region of the South, undergraduates could
profitably read this as an introduction to twentieth century
environmental history or Southern history. Ray personalizes the
interaction of man and environment and draws attention to the subtle
qualities of forests that disappear when the landscape is regarded as a
giant field for cultivating. This book is also a call to action to
realize her 'dream [that] we can bring back the longleaf… along with
sandhills and savannas … and … all the herbs and trees and wild
animals, the ones not irretrievably lost, which deserve an existence
apart from slavery to our own' (p. 270) Ray is subtle as a chainsaw
here, but it may be too late for subtlety if the South has any hope of
coming to a new sense of the old cliché that it 'will rise
again' (p.272)”—Environmental History, v8 No. 4, October 2003, James
Tuten
"Janisse Ray's award-winning Ecology of a Cracker
Childhood is one of those books that can open up a whole unfamiliar
world, both the culture of generations of south Georgia 'crackers' and the
endangered ecosystem of majestic longleaf pine forests. With vividness
and intensity, Ray recounts her family's joys and hardships (para) She
melds this portrait with a coastal plains landscape re-created by her
adult perspective as a naturalist. (comparison) Ray practices a special
kind of environmental writing, powerfully interweaving memories of a
beloved family with her passion to save a treasured landscape.” Sarasota
Herald-Tribune, Andrea Dimino
