lunabee34

Janisse Ray was the writer in residence for part of the time I was in grad school at Ole Miss. Weirdly, I didn't meet her then (although Josh did) but later when I took this job in Georgia. She came to speak at our institution, and later I spent a weekend at a writer's retreat on her farm in Baxley. Here's my write up of her talk.

The retreat was magical. She and her husband Raven live as sustainably as possible, growing and making and reusing as much of what they need as possible. She took us to her parents' junkyard featured in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and out to Moody Forest. We wrote and shared what we were writing. I cannot fathom why, but I didn't post about the retreat; all I can find on DW is a brief mention that I'm going. :(

Janisse is the real deal. She is utterly genuine. What you read in her books is exactly how she is in real life. She is very, very kind with not a speck of snobbery in her.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The writing is beautiful with sections of memoir juxtaposed with sections of naturalist and historical writing. Ray is deeply concerned with conservation of the little longleaf pine that remains in the South and with the conservation of the natural world in general.

I find resonances with my own Southern upbringing and heritage in the memoir sections.

Highly recommended.

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Moody Forest by Janisse Ray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of short essays that Ray compiled in an effort to save Moody Forest, a large swathe of virgin forest along the Altamaha River that was protected as long as its owners were living but in jeopardy once they passed away (because the inheritors would have to cut timber on the 3500 acres just to be able to afford to pay the estate taxes; the land is worth millions of dollars). Fortunately, this is a success story; the inheritors put the land up for auction, and it was purchased by the Nature Conservancy of Georgia for 8.25 million dollars. The land is now protected.

Not all of the writing in this collection is good on a technical level; most of these essays are written by downhome country people who probably haven't done much writing in their lives; as a result, they get a bit repetitive in telling the same stories about the Moodys. But I enjoy these essays for the sense of community they invoke and the sense of place. The essay about electricity coming to the area and the way the community was responsible for actually clearing the path and putting up the poles and stringing the cable (all without power tools) was really interesting. These essays are interspersed with essays by professional writers and naturalists like Ray and Rick Bass (whose essay is really weird to me; I usually like Rick Bass, but his essay in this collection misses the mark for me).

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