Janisse
Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Wild Card Quilt, Taking a
Chance on Home and Pinhook, Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented
Land
Reviews by Carrol Wolverton
Southern
author, Janisse Ray, grew up knowing she was poor Southern and absorbed
early her differences from “regular” folk. That she lived within her
father’s “wrecking yard” only evidenced and cemented her feelings.
Fundamentalist to the core, womenfolk wore dresses in her world - also
no makeup, no television, no dancing, no holidays. Shoes worn rarely, no
guests visited beyond family – unless, of course, they needed a motor, a
replacement part, a piece of metal, or something repaired. Her father’s
genius worked wonders with anything mechanical or anything potentially
useful. That genius took another direction with daughter, Janisse.
Her daddy
bought and scavenged all. He also lived off the land, as did the rest of
rural Georgia. Only Jacksonville, Florida provided a church
fundamentalist enough to match his beliefs – all the way from rural
Baxley. He also rescued wildlife and saved what he could. Periodic bouts
of mental illness sent him away. She was never hungry but felt keenly
separated.
“My kin
lumbered across the landscape like tortoises. Like raccoons we fought
and with equal fervor we frolicked . . . Accustomed to poverty, we made
use of assets at hand, and we did not think much of prosperity. Like our
lives, our speech was slow. We remained a people apart. More than
anything else, what happened to the long-leaf country speaks for us.
These are my people; our legacy is ruination.” (87, Ecology)
Janisse
grew up in wonder and ignorance within her rapidly despoiling
environment, that is until she grew old enough to reach the outside
world. Her background and education eventually drove her to write the
multiple award-winning memoir, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.
This book gives voice to the poor I saw when we first moved to Savannah
in the early eighties, shoeless people I didn’t know existed any more.
That book established her as a serious author and keen observer of the
Georgia landscape. She laments often the disappearing long-leaf pines
and the whole host of wildlife depending on the trees – also
disappearing.
“In a
longleaf forest,” she says of remaining timber, “miles of trees forever
fade into a brilliant salmon sunset and reappear the next dawn as a
battalion marching out of fog. The tip of each needle carries a single
drop of silver. The trees are so well spaced that their limbs seldom
touch and sunlight streams between and within them. Below their
flattened branches, grasses arch their tall, richly dun heads of seeds,
and orchids and lilies paint the ground orange and scarlet. Purple
liatris gestures across the landscape. Our eyes seek the flowers like
they seek the flashes of birds and the careful crossings of forest
animals.” (14, Ecology)
Such
crafted words telling tales of her family and relatives rivet the reader
to another world, a world of wonder from the viewpoint of a child and
later, an adult. One great story tells about her bringing home a Ph.D.
botanist boyfriend who grew up Central Florida affluence. Said boyfriend
gaped incredulously at his surroundings and stayed in his room for the
rest of his visit, coming out only for meals. He left and promptly broke
off their relationship.
“I am
daily aghast at how much we have taken,” she says, “since it does not
belong to us, and how much as a people we have suffered in consequence.”
(15, Ecology) She is fourth generation Cracker and a descendant from
original settlers after the Creek Indians were defeated in 1818.
Lotteries determined where land went, and Revolutionary soldiers were
rewarded. She couldn’t wait to escape and die.
Her
education only makes her more aghast as she catalogs the ongoing
destruction of native species. Threatened are Indigo Snake, Bachman’s
Sparrow, Flatwoods Salamander, plus lists that go on and on. She
dedicates her life to preserving what’s left and restoring what’s
possible. The aghast botanist should see her now. She’s speaking to him
from her different world with a message he needs to learn.
Wild Card Quilt
She never thought
she’d return home but did, striking a tenuous truce with her
fundamentalist father. Returning with her was a son, Silas, and no
apparent husband. Discussions ensued, discussions about the existence of
hell and what she thought about it. Her unwed status smoldered, but her
parents loved the child. Her older sister broke with the family
completely for a long time. Janisse did not, her love of the land
overriding any differences.
She marks her return
by moving into the farmhouse of her maternal grandmother, Beaulah, a
woman who only tolerated her son-in-law and considered his people
worthless. Janisse and her siblings loved visiting grandmama as children
because her family celebrated Christmas and Easter. The kids loved every
minute. She feels Grandmama's presence upon her return and finds ghostly
beauty in the old rusted and rotted legacy around the farm as she
recognizes moldering old items and their former uses. In places she can
see daylight through the old house walls.
One story tells about
a huge Sassafras tree on back acreage carefully nurtured by the family
who chopped at roots far from the base so as not to damage the tree. The
very first tenant farmer promptly kills the tree. So it is with much of
rural Georgia. She laments over and over the fragmentation and demise of
natural long-leaf pine forests on which so much wildlife depends. Along
with her chronicle of nature, she pieces a wild card quilt with her
mother. In such ways she seeks to save family, too.
As with
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, family tales make for the best
stories. We learn about relatives and others, good and bad. We learn
about Miss Elizabeth, who knows Janisse as Lee Ada’s daughter, who owns
part of one of the remaining virgin stands of long-leaf pine. Upon her
demise, the land will be split among relatives and likely sold off to
loggers. It’s Janisse’s mission to save the forest, and she marshals
efforts to do so by forming an advocacy group and joining forces with
others.
She also
meets the love of her life, a man named Raven. Their wedding serves to
reunite the family and marry her all over again to the land. She relates
her evolving role as an activist and author and tells of both wins and
losses. Reforestation, she tells us, is a far cry from the original
long-leaf forests and the wildlife that dies off forever once an
original forest is destroyed. It takes awhile for total death to occur,
so none but the aware pay attention until there are no more wildlife or
no more fish.
Pinhook
Pinhook describes related swamp adjoining
her native Okefenokee, in a work she self-labels as literary
non-fiction. As with her memoirs, the book abounds in descriptions of
fragmented swamp that will not survive without intense efforts at
preservation. The wild animals supported by the swamp ecosystem, such as
the black bear, require vast range to survive – vast undisturbed natural
range. The Black Panther is gone, along with a host of other critters
and birds that once co-existed in abundance, all dependent on the swamp.
“Fragmentation is what happens when a glass platter falls,” she tells
us. “Except that landscape fragmentation happens slowly, incrementally.
In the moment the first tree fell did the plate begin to slip? At what
point did it lay broken at our feet?” (2, Pinhook)
She
dedicates her efforts and writing to furthering preservation of the
swamp environment that her predecessors took for granted. It’s as if
she’s doing penance for her Celtic heritage that moved in after the
Creek Indians were massacred. The post Revolutionary War settlers used,
took, shot, cut, and cleared whatever they felt like for their own
purposes. That land-rape continues.
And
that’s her whole point. She and her ilk must restore and preserve what
they can. Like on-going global warming, the swamps are ever more
endangered and the results gradual and disastrous. Parts are acquired as
state or federal land, but too much remains fragmented.
Interspersed are poems, short monologues, and reams of information about
how Pinhook Swamp operates and hangs on to life – constantly trying to
reclaim its former state so desecrated by the arrival of settlers.
Ironies
abound. For a woman who disavows traditional religion, she writes a mean
psalm to the “wild abandon” of nature, saying that we may once again be
clothed in “unrent garments of honor.” (140, Pinhook). I feel her
father smiling here.
She is at
her best relating the tales of the people. Yet it is the people who
destroy trees, swamp, and animals. Pinhook personifies the swamp
but contains far too few tales of the people. And the tales are there.
She has no problem getting locals to talk about old ways and old swamp.
All she has to do is plunk herself outside any rural store at the
interspersed rural hangouts. Locals appear at designated areas, they
share, and the stories are good. She is one of them, and she speaks
their language of nature.
Pinhook
contains beautifully metaphoric descriptions but lacks sufficient tales
to make it sing. The people stories may detract from her message, but
they also further it by grabbing hold of the reader. Too many people
don’t understand the crisis or lack the power to impact change. And that
reigns as her challenge, to educate and promote preservation – to
empower the uninformed into action.
With even
more irony, Pinhook Swamp itself doesn’t welcome her during a night-long
stay alone in a tent. Lightening “jabs like devil’s forks.” (98, Pinhook)
Rain pelts and floods the tent telling her she is unforgiven for her
four-generation legacy of destruction. So she carries that burden onward
like the albatross in Coleridge’s, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” She
labors on and continues her journey. Her mother helped her make the wild
card quilt. But with his human legacy of both madness and genius, her
father travels with her – forever.
