Many a book has been written about Key West, but there has never been anything like Stetson Kennedy's Grits & Grunts, a portrait of the Key West that was. Neither a history (though you will learn a lot about Key West's unique past) nor a guidebook (though you will learn more about Key West than any guides offer), Grits & Grunts is a treasure trove gleaned from the rich multiculture that came to full-flower on "The Rock" during the first half of the twentieth century, "when Key West was Key West." You'll find an abundant sampling of the inimitable art of Mario Sanchez, whose carved bas-relief paintings of Key West street scenes are in great demand around the world, as well as many never-before-published photographs. The overflowing Key West songbag is also here in all its abundance, from lullabies to traditional ballads, as well as games and folktales.
Florida is blessed with a semitropical climate, beautiful inland areas, and over a thousand miles of warm seas and sandy beaches. And Floridians are every bit as colorful and diverse as the tropical foliage. The interaction between Florida's people and its environment has created distinctive mixes of traditional life unlike those anywhere else in America. Florida's cultural foundation includes Seminoles, Anglo-Celtic Crackers, African Americans, transplanted northerners, and ethnic communities, as well as cultural syntheses developed from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries in Key West, Tampa, St. Augustine, and Pensacola. In recent decades, the state's population has been strongly impacted by large-scale immigration from Cuba, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. South Florida leads other regions in the development of a contemporary cultural synthesis, but Orlando and Tampa are rapidly evolving. Even sleepy north Florida is experiencing a significant shift. Although several books detail the traditions of specific Florida regions or folk groups, this is the first to provide an overview of Florida folklife. The Florida Folklife Reader brings together essays written by folklorists, anthropologists, and ethnomusicologists on a wide array of topics. The authors examine topics as diverse as regional and ethnic folk groups, occupational folklife, the built environment, musical traditions, rituals, and celebrations.
"Here is the book lover's literary tour of Florida, an exhaustive survey of writers, books, and literary sites in every part of the state. The state is divided into ten areas and each one is described from a literary point of view. You will learn what authors lived in or wrote about a place, which books describe the place, what important movies were made there, even the literary trivia which the true Florida book lover will want to know. You can use the book as a travel guide to a new way to see the state, as an armchair guide to a better understanding of our literary heritage, or as a guide to what to read next time you head to a bookstore or library."--Publisher.
Florida Historical Society Charlton Tebeau Award "An outstanding piece of Florida fishing history by one of the most famous marine biologists in Florida."--Gene Shinn, author of Bootstrap Geologist: My Life in Science "A perfect blend of history, science, and adventure. Allowing his natural storytelling talent to shine through, Voss tells of the waters, inlets, coves, and colorful characters that comprised South Florida in the early twentieth century."--Janet DeVries, author of Pioneering Palm Beach: The Deweys and the South Florida Frontier "A vivid picture of Voss's early years as a fisherman and outdoorsman prior to his illustrious career as a marine scientist and educator, who passed along volumes of knowledge about the marine environment and its inhabitants to the scientific community."--Tommy Thompson, author of The Saltwater Angler's Guide to Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida "A priceless memoir and a spectacular adventure."--Terry Howard, author of High Seas Wranglers: The Lives of Atlantic Fishing Captains Long before tourism dominated Florida’s coastline, the state was home to dozens of commercial fisheries and ethnically diverse communities of rugged individuals who made their living from the sea. In A Pioneer Son at Sea, Gilbert Voss, a celebrated marine biologist, recounts his early days of fishing on both coasts of the peninsula during the Great Depression and World War II. Here are vanished scenes from old Florida, almost unimaginable to modern residents of the state: gill-netting for mackerel off Jupiter, the early days of charterboat fishing for sailfish out of Stuart and Boynton, the snapper fleet at Carrabelle, sponge-diving at Tarpon Springs, the oyster fishery at Crystal River, and mullet fishing from airboats at Flamingo. Oversized personalities inhabit these pages, including Voss's brothers, who were themselves seminal figures in the early days of Florida big-game fishing. Voss's anecdotes feature Crackers, rum runners, murderers, Conchs, wealthy industrialists, now-legendary charterboatmen, Greek spongers, and Cuban vivero captains. These stories are not just spirited portraits of fishermen from a bygone era, they are also remarkable tales of the formative years in the life of a scientist and conservationist who later worked tirelessly to preserve our dwindling marine resources.
In 1935, the United States Congress began employing large numbers of American artists through the Works Progress Administration--fiction writers, photographers, poster artists, dramatists, painters, sculptors, muralists, wood carvers, composers and choreographers, as well as journalists, historians and researchers. Secretary of Commerce and supervisor of the WPA Harry Hopkins hailed it a "renascence of the arts, if we can call it a rebirth when it has no precedent in our history." Women were eminently involved, creating a wide variety of art and craft, interweaving their own stories with those of other women whose lives might not otherwise have received attention. This book surveys the thousands of women artists who worked for the U.S. government, the historical and social worlds they described and the collaborative depiction of womanhood they created at a pivotal moment in American history.
Midwives, women healers and root workers have been central figures in the African American folk traditions. Particularly in Black communities in the rural south, these women served vital social, cultural and political functions. It was believed that they possessed magical powers: they negotiated the barrier between life and death and were often regarded as the "knower" in a community. Today even as medical science has discredited or superseded their power, granny midwives have resurfaced as pivotal characters in the narratives of contemporary African American literature. GrannyMidwives and Black Women Writersexamines the lives of realgranny midwives and other healers--through oral narratives, ethnographic research and documentation--and considers them in tandem with their fictional counterparts in the work of Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker and others.
