Wild Card Quilt

Wild Card Quilt

Author: Janisse Ray

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1571312781

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A follow-up to the American Book Award-winning "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Wild Card Quilt" finds a journey to a childhood home becoming a powerful meditation on bridging the cultural divide.


Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Author: Janisse Ray

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Published: 2023-07

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1571317953

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the memories of a childhood marked by extreme poverty, mental illness, and restrictive fundamentalist Christian rules, Janisse Ray crafted a “heartfelt and refreshing” (New York Times) memoir that has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings, no matter how humble, and to fight for the places they love. This new edition updates and contextualizes the story for a new generation and a wider audience desperately searching for stories of empowerment and hope. Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, 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. Today, the forests exist in fragments, cherished and threatened, and the South of her youth is gradually being overtaken by golf courses and suburban development. A contemporary classic, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a clarion call to protect the cultures and ecologies of every childhood.


Walking in the Land of Many Gods

Walking in the Land of Many Gods

Author: A. James Wohlpart

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0820345245

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"How are we placed on Earth? What is our relationship to the world around us, and how does our thinking affect the way we relate to the world? We are entrapped, says A. James Wohlpart, by what Martin Heidegger calls "enframing," a worldview that considers all objects as mere resources for our use. Walking in the Land of Many Gods envisions a new way of thinking about the world, one grounded in a moral imagination reconnected to Earth. Insightful readings of three contemporary classics of nature writing--Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, and Linda Hogan's Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World--are at the heart of Wohlpart's endeavor. Powerful and affecting works like these reveal a pathway to a deeper remembering, one that reconnects us with the primal forces of creation and acknowledges the sacredness of the world. We have forgotten that the world around us is rich and fertile and generative, says Wohlpart. His exploration of these literary works, based on deep anthropology and Native American philosophy, opens a pathway into a new way of thinking called sacred reason. Founded on interdependence and interrelationship, and on care and compassion, sacred reason reminds us that divinity exists around us at all times. We are invited to walk, once again, in a land filled with many gods."--


Dare to Be Square Quilting

Dare to Be Square Quilting

Author: Boo Davis

Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0307462366

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Davis's designs, which range from skulls to owls to alarm clocks, are a far cry from the traditional designs of years past. Yet all of them draw on simple squares and rectangles, and all are inspired by traditional techniques.


Faulkner and the Ecology of the South

Faulkner and the Ecology of the South

Author: Joseph R. Urgo

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2009-09-18

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1604730641

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1952, Faulkner noted the exceptional nature of the South when he characterized it as “the only really authentic region in the United States, because a deep indestructible bond still exists between man and his environment.” The essays collected in Faulkner and the Ecology of the South explore Faulkner's environmental imagination, seeking what Ann Fisher-Wirth calls the : “ecological counter-melody” of his texts. “Ecology” was not a term in common use outside the sciences in Faulkner's time. However, the word “environment” seems to have held deep meaning for Faulkner. Often he repeated his abiding interest in “man in conflict with himself, with his fellow man, or with his time and place, his environment.” Eco-criticism has led to a renewed interest among literary scholars for what in this volume Cecelia Tichi calls, “humanness within congeries of habitats and environments.” Philip Weinstein draws on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus. Eric Anderson argues that Faulkner's fiction has much to do with ecology in the sense that his work often examines the ways in which human communities interact with the natural world, and François Pitavy sees Faulkner's wilderness as unnatural in the ways it represents reflections of man's longings and frustrations. Throughout these essays, scholars illuminate in fresh ways the precarious ecosystem of Yoknapatawpha County.


Poverty Politics

Poverty Politics

Author: Sarah Robertson

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2019-08-23

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1496824342

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Representations of southern poor whites have long shifted between romanticization and demonization. At worst, poor southern whites are aligned with racism, bigotry, and right-wing extremism, and, at best, regarded as the passive victims of wider, socioeconomic policies. In Poverty Politics: Poor Whites in Contemporary Southern Writing, author Sarah Robertson pushes beyond these stereotypes and explores the impact of neoliberalism and welfare reform on depictions of poverty. Robertson examines representations of southern poor whites across various types of literature, including travel writing, photo-narratives, life-writing, and eco-literature, and reveals a common interest in communitarianism that crosses the boundaries of the US South and regionalism, moving past ideas about the culture of poverty to examine the economics of poverty. Included are critical examinations of the writings of southern writers such as Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg, Barbara Kingsolver, Tim McLaurin, Toni Morrison, and Ann Pancake. Poverty Politics includes critical engagement with identity politics as well as reflections on issues including Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 financial crisis, and mountaintop removal. Robertson interrogates the presumed opposition between the Global North and the Global South and engages with microregions through case studies on Appalachian photo-narratives and eco-literature. Importantly, she focuses not merely on representations of southern poor whites, but also on writing that calls for alternative ways of reconceptualizing not just the poor, but societal measures of time, value, and worth.


The Bioregional Imagination

The Bioregional Imagination

Author: Tom Lynch

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 0820341711

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Bioregionalism is an innovative way of thinking about place and planet from an ecological perspective. Although bioregional ideas occur regularly in ecocritical writing, until now no systematic effort has been made to outline the principles of bioregional literary criticism and to use it as a way to read, write, understand, and teach literature. The twenty-four original essays here are written by an outstanding selection of international scholars. The range of bioregions covered is global and includes such diverse places as British Columbia's Meldrum Creek and Italy's Po River Valley, the Arctic and the Outback. There are even forays into cyberspace and outer space. In their comprehensive introduction, the editors map the terrain of the bioregional movement, including its history and potential to inspire and invigorate place-based and environmental literary criticism. Responding to bioregional tenets, this volume is divided into four sections. The essays in the “Reinhabiting” section narrate experiments in living-in-place and restoring damaged environments. The “Rereading” essays practice bioregional literary criticism, both by examining texts with strong ties to bioregional paradigms and by opening other, less-obvious texts to bioregional analysis. In “Reimagining,” the essays push bioregionalism to evolve—by expanding its corpus of texts, coupling its perspectives with other approaches, or challenging its core constructs. Essays in the “Renewal” section address bioregional pedagogy, beginning with local habitat studies and concluding with musings about the Internet. In response to the environmental crisis, we must reimagine our relationship to the places we inhabit. This volume shows how literature and literary studies are fundamental tools to such a reimagining.