Description
Hardback. Price includes shipping within the US. Signed by author.
A contemporary classic, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a clarion call to protect the cultures and ecologies of every childhood, but especially that of the iconic longleaf pine that grew in the southeastern U.S.
Read all about this amazing ecosystem in a book printed in 1999, signed then by the author, and still in pristine condition.
Using her memories of poverty, mental illness, and fundamentalist religion, Janisse Ray crafted a “heartfelt and refreshing” (New York Times) memoir that has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings and to fight for the places they love. This book has given voice to many who love their places despite destruction and violence.
Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1 in southern Georgia, 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.
The longleaf pine forest, which once covered 93 million acres of the southeastern uplands, reached a low of 3 million acres. It exists in fragments, cherished and threatened, as the South of Ray’s youth is gradually being overtaken by golf courses and suburban development.
The forest was almost lost for good. However, following the publication of this book and with the amazing work of multitudes of ecologists, scientists, and on-the-ground activists, the longleaf forest now is highlighted in American’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative. The goal of this federal program is to restore 8 million acres of longleaf pine by 2025.
Pubished by Milkweed Editions, October 1999.
