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ecology of a Cracker Childhood (The World As Home) Paperback – July 28, 2000

by Janisse Ray (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 431 ratings
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Janisse Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound vacationers by the hedge at the edge of the road and by hulks of old cars and stacks of blown-out tires. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood tells how a childhood spent in rural isolation and steeped in religious fundamentalism grew into a passion to save the almost vanished longleaf pine ecosystem that once covered the South. In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, Ray redeems two Souths. "Suffused with the same history-haunted sense of loss that imprints so much of the South and its literature. What sets Ecology of a Cracker Childhood apart is the ambitious and arresting mission implied in its title. . . . Heartfelt and refreshing." - The New York Times Book Review.
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  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Milkweed Editions
  4. Publication date
    July 28, 2000
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.75 x 7.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1571312471
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1571312471
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Milkweed Editions; Reprint edition (July 28, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1571312471
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1571312471
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 7.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 431 ratings

About the author

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Janisse Ray

Janisse Ray

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Janisse Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1 near Baxley, Ga. She is the author of ECOLOGY OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD, which won the American Book Award and other honors. Since ECOLOGY she has published five books.

THE SEED UNDERGROUND: A GROWING REVOLUTION TO SAVE FOOD came out from Chelsea Green Publishing in 2012. Most of her work is literary nonfiction and deals with the human relationship to nature.

She earned an MFA from the University of Montana and holds two honorary doctorates, one from LaGrange College in LaGrange, GA and one from Unity College in Unity, ME. In 2016 she was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame and in 2019 won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Writers Association.

She lives on an organic farm in Georgia.

She writes poetry (A HOUSE OF BRANCHES) and fiction in addition to creative nonfiction.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
431 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

James Denny
5.0 out of 5 stars Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2008
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"Write about what you know," is an old axiom for would-be authors. Janisse Ray takes this to heart in "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood." Part autobiography and childhood memoir and part an ecology of plants and animals, this is a wonderful tale that successfully blends both.

Janisse Ray is writing about what she knows best. The human dimension to her tale is a tale of growing up with her family in the natural world. The family home sits in the middle of a junkyard along old Route 1 in southeastern Georgia in a forest of longleaf pine. It is a coming of age story, where she is clearly destined for a horizon beyond the junkyard in the pines.

She is solidly grounded in her childhood environment, low on the affluence scale, but one which has prepared her well for life. "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" conveys a great sense of place and will give the reader a newfound respect for a forest of longleaf pine.

I bought this book at the Visitor Center at the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, not all that far from Baxley, Georgia. I am glad they stocked it in the store. Reading this put me on to "Pinhook," her next work which I also recommend.
7 people found this helpful
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5.0 out of 5 stars Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (The World As Home) Paperback by Janisse Ray
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2014
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Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (The World As Home) Paperback by Janisse Ray is a good story of Ms. Ray's childhood experiences in a Georgia Cracker upbringing, raised in a backwoods junkyard, but near the Long Needle Pines of which Georgia is famous. This poignantly written story of her growing years is as strong moving look inside her life, a real account of her coming of age and her wisdom she takes from this opportunity to see the beauty of the pine forests she visited so regularly. Every part of this book reveals what she is, with her appreciation for the beauty she acknowledges about the region she was raised in and loves so deeply. I will read and reread this book again for the wonderful appreciation Ms. Ray gives of this environment.
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RALPH H BELL
4.0 out of 5 stars Two books in One
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2011
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Thoroughly enjoyable and educational. Every other chapter is about the endangered longleaf pine which once stretched from Viginia to Louisiana. The true identy and origin of the term Cracker is explained clearly for the first time. Also embedded in the chapters not about the longleaf pine is a long and continuing observation and explanation about mental illness. The passage written by her mentally ill father describing his view of his illness is quite powerful. For me it gave new insight into the state of Georgia and the settlers in the southern portion. I was initially dreading it would go overboard on ecology but the balance she seems to show between human and plant life kept me reading.
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TJP
5.0 out of 5 stars Cracker Wisdom
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2017
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I came of age at a time and place when being ecologically aware meant you flattened your tin cans before tossing them in the trash. Fortunately, our planet is home to Janisse Ray and others who share her passion for nature and living sparingly. Ms. Ray, the author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, combines hilarity with heartache, alternating between musings on the abundant natural resources that surrounded her childhood home in Appling County, Georgia, and memories of her impoverished upbringing.

Ms. Ray writes about Christian fundamentalism very matter-of-factly; neither condemning or endorsing the religion that permeated every aspect of her growing up years. She talks about her family lineage and inter-generational poverty in a style that is reminiscent of Rick Bragg, a fellow southern author.

Deprived children must be resourceful and creative. Ms. Ray and her siblings “took trips” in abandoned cars that populated her father’s junkyard. “Sometimes in warm weather and even in cold, to escape the house and the endless work, we would go sit in the junk cars with the windows rolled down, and we would pretend to travel to far-off places.”

In time, Ms. Ray will leave home, journeying northward to college. She will meet an older student, a kindred spirit – “we loved the same things – poetry and the woods. Aloud across a campfire we read Walt Whitman, and when we described the lives we wanted, our desires were the same: to live simply, close to nature, to grow and collect our own food, to use plants as medicines, to be as self-sufficient as possible.”

As I write this on a splendid early summer morning, a grey squirrel is clambering down a tall Douglas fir tree, heading for the side of the house in search of sunflower seeds and peanuts that may have rolled off the deck railing above. I have seen dozens of other squirrels make that same precarious journey down that same tree but today there is an extra measure of appreciation for our mutual existence.
12 people found this helpful
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Lynn Badger
5.0 out of 5 stars One of My New Favorite Books
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2013
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I am rarely so moved by the beauty of a book as to shed tears; I can count the number of books that have affected me that way on one hand. This is one of them (another is Illumination in the Flatwoods, another north Florida/south Georgia book). The chapter "written" by Audubon to Bachman while in heaven (with St. Francis and millions of Carolina parakeets present) just did me in with its beauty. I am in awe of Ray's skill as a writer; she is obviously both a naturalist and a poet. But what stands out the most for me about this book is the love. I'm not sure if I've ever seen in a memoir so much love, between the parents, from the parents for the children, and from Ray for her parents, as well, of course, as for the long leaf pine ecosystem. The amount and sheer force of the love in this book reminds me of Angela's Ashes. It doesn't get much better than this.
3 people found this helpful
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Sumayya Allen
3.0 out of 5 stars Content good - binding bad
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2013
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The binding on this book is terrible! We had to purchase this as required reading for my daugher's 9th grade Honors Lit course and her copy is already falling apart! She takes extreme care of her books, but the production of this book is just plain faulty. She informed me that all of the students in her class are having the same problems with their books. I am looking into contacting the publisher to complain, and this is something I usually do not do, but this is just really a problem. The book is good and Janisse Ray is an awesome author - so no complaints about content at all!
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Top reviews from other countries

Hank Montgomery
4.0 out of 5 stars A warm, friendly read which opens up a once ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2015
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A warm, friendly read which opens up a once closed childhood to the world, and leaves it to blossom in a very clear and well written style which explores the author's history as well as the nature of her childhood environment.
One person found this helpful
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