Customer Reviews

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

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this book is a must for any Southerner and for anyone interested in the environment. Though I was born and raised in Georgia I was ignorant of the ecology of the longleaf pine forests. And though I have often drive through the region described in the book I knew nothing about the people there. The book alternates between a memoir of Ray's family and upbringing and lyrical descriptions of the land in which they lived. She also tells the story of the magnificent pine forests which grew from Virginia to Mississippi and which are almost nonexistent today. There are many books today about "my childhood" but this is far superior to any I have read with the exception of Mary Karr's "The Liar's Club." It will be of interest to environmentalists and lovers of good writing alike.

Oooooooo-eeee. I cannot tell you the number of times you will pause while reading this extraordinarily sensitive and profoundly moving life-story. Some of your pauses will feature your face wreathed in smiles, for Janisse Ray's "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" is a celebration of both place and family, and her finely-delineated family sketches and gloriously-rendered anecdotes and teeming with respect and affection for her family. Other pauses will find you, I am sure, hands on knees, weeping. For there is great pain in this book as well...the pain of a place that is gradually disappearing, the pain of understanding your place in that place, the pain of coming to grips with the flaws of your heritage.

One reviewer, Wes Jackson, said, "Janisse Ray is a role model for countless future rural writers to come." I believe that he understates Ms. Ray's importance. To tell the truth, she is a role model, plain and simple. It is my hope that this stirring memoir will vault her into our nation's consciousness and conscience. This daughter of a Cracker junkyard owner has a significant message to tell us, and her language is simply remarkable. Her verbal imagery is astounding; her precise descriptions -- of humans, flora and fauna -- are models of elegance.

I am willing to bet that there are more than a few readers who could only imagine the possible union of Ms. Ray and Rick Bragg ("All Over but the Shoutin'"). These two white Southerners have much to teach us about family, conscience, commitments and reverence of place.

"Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" will emerge as one of our century's most important works. Be glad to have read it when it first came out.

Ms. Ray presents a refreshing approach to a "growing up" memoir that is simultaneously heart-tugging, entertaining and convicting. All of our personal and family histories are closely linked to the natural history of some place. Ms. Ray gives us a wonderful reminder of that through the interweaving of her personal experiences and the history of the long leaf pine ecosystem. She also tells us just how tragic it is that so much of what should be the current part of that "history" is lost or about to be. Ms. Ray helps us experience the joys and the heartbreaks of her own family, and the dangers and adventures of a junkyard. The uncommon combination of what on the surface might seem to be diverse topics could have come across as disjunct had they not been so wonderfully melded. This book is a renewing flame for the mind and the heart.

It is difficult to capture the everyday incidents of a life and intersperse them into a broader view of world thought, but Ms. Ray has accomplished this. She has presented an accurate picture of a lifestyle in America, in a segment of society often mis-understood and neglected, if not resented by a fast and hedonistic society. Her ability to weave the memoirs of a simple life into a broader world-view. I am impressed with her style, her easy ability to make us see inside her viewpoints, and the reflection that her book has brought to me about a life that is quickly passing us by.

I originally read Janisse Ray's memoirs and essay collection, "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood", for a class in college. To be honest, I hated it at first and told two of my classmates that if Janisse was so conscious of the environment, then why had the trees died to print this book. I ate those words before I was half way through. Janisse Ray has an immaculate voice and breathtaking experiences to share with us about her childhood, spent living with her family in a junkyard.

The book alternates each chapter between memoirs and essays on the natural forests of Georgia. My preference was on Ray's childhood - where she describes in rich detail about the family bonds that arise out of poverty. There is a certain mystical fantasy about her childhood playgrounds, as she talks about being in a family with money prolbems and numerous mouths to feed. Ray exposes the dark sides of her father's religious fanaticism and mental instability. These stories are honest and refrain from sentimentality. Ray tells talks about her life with simple facts and observations. We experience with her a full view of her introducing a college boyfriend to the wreckage that has been transformed into a home.

"Ecology of a Crack Childhood" is a powerful read that everyone should have the opportunity to experience. I, myself, have spent most of my life growing up in cities, but at least now I have a taste of what the rural world has to offer.

With "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood," Janisse Ray has reminded me of what it was like to grow up in South Georgia. Being from south of Hazlehurst, I know our childhood homes were less than 15 miles apart. But her junkyard near Baxley was a far different experience from my life on the farm. Still, I know what it's like to fall in love with trees and want to preserve them. And all those characters she had to put up with, I know them too -- or people much like them. Readers of Amy Blackmarr, another South Georgia writer who lives closely with nature, will love reading Janisse Ray, whose greatest thrill about the forest is "how the pine trees sing...This music cannot be heard anywhere else on the earth." Indeed, it can't.

Ray has written an interesting mix of memoir and nature book in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. She shows us growing up in the 60's and 70's in the rural, poor southeast corner of Georgia, where amongst a rolling junkyard of old machines, and surrounded by a vast array of characters, she and her family eked out a simple, and relatively comfortable existence. What helps make this book unique is the positive ness of it - Ray is not telling stories looking back and showing why she left the area when she could. Nor is she breaking our hearts with stories of hardship, violence or innocence lost that so many stories of poor country upbringing. Instead, it is a collection of wry and emotional stories of her life, interspersed with stories about the beloved longleaf pine forest. Surprising this alternating flows naturally, and is not as jarring as one would expect. In fact, her passion for the forest intertwines with her passion for life, and for her family. The essential conflict of the biography does not involve her really, it involves the forest's fight to survive in the face of cutting and tree farming, and the encroachment of civilization. A fine book with a point that does not hit you over the head with this message. Rather she beautifully entwines growing up with growing up with nature. It's a shame if we let her world disappear. An excellent and enjoyable read.

I left rural Georgia 25 years ago. This book has filled me with longings for what I left behind, and an insatiable desire to discover what I naively overlooked - namely, the rich and tragic ecological history of southern Georgia.

All of Janisse's work, but most especially Cracker Childhood, is so very much a snapshot of South Georgia. She grabs you, her reader, by the hand and transports you to her South -- a South where Gone with the Wind is just another goofy movie starring a British actress, a South where Faulkner defied and defined a culture, a South where loggers are systematically erasing the long-leaf pines that once embraced elemental hard-scrabble lives. If you are game for an adventurous romp through dismal swamps, junk yards, and back woods then this is the read for you. Once you take it up you will be loathe to put it down.
Thank you, Janisse, for a wonderful trip!

This book is simply exquisite. Ray uses lyrical language and stricking imagery to tell her story. The book is both poignent and hopeful. Everyone I have recommended this book to has thanked me many times. It is a must-read for any environmentalist, but the book is not merely an environmentalist book. It is one that taps into what it means to be human in our world today. I know you will love it and will read it more than once.