The
eighteen children in his “charge” were “imprisoned by the circumstances of
their birth.” He left them a prayer, “That the river is good to them in crossing.”
17 Bookers including one guest, Roz Ball
(our resident pilot’s stepmother) visiting from Seattle, met at the home of
Donna Walter to discuss this month’s selection, The Water is Wide, a
memoir by Pat Conroy. Many thanks to everyone who participated in our “Bookers got you covered” hat parade in
honor of Jane Freer and special appreciation to Cherry Fugitt for birthing the
idea and taking charge of the program. To all who brought enough hats, scarfs,
and turbans to keep our dear friend’s head warm and chic, we are grateful
beyond words to be part of this special community. The hatboxes and gift sacks
were delivered to their front porch this afternoon so we’re hoping this outpouring
of love was enough to put a smile on Jane’s face! Many of us have projects near
and dear to our hearts and as a promise to the Freers, Patty Evans pledged Wreaths Across America would continue
with donations of wreaths and volunteers from the PWC and our community to
deliver them with Jane leading the pack
of volunteers next December. Patty will be compiling a list so if you are
interested in participating in this heartfelt project, please contact her at pevans@thirdring.net. We all also extend our thoughts
and prayers to those within our community dealing with on-going health issues.
Pat Conroy is the author
of six novels and five non-fiction books and for those who do not know Conroy's heartbreaking work, he grew up as a military
brat, one of seven children, son of a Marine Corps pilot whose hobby and solace
was to beat his wife and children until they cried "uncle." He sought
refuge in books partially because he knew his father would not beat him while
he was reading as he assumed he was studying. Books were his constant
companions as they relocated from one military base to another. The first novel
his mother read to him was Gone With The Wind – and in her warm
Southern tone, she took the book characters and compared them to their
real-life relatives. Conroy said his mother showed him that the relationship between
life and art was very close; you just had to pay attention to find it. The most powerful words in English are "Tell me a story… words that are
intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the
continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and
art itself.” He was a poet who wrote prose….a
novelist who could bring a sunset into a dark room, invite you to smell the
scent of a gardenia with a few sensual words….and make you laugh and cry in the
same sentence. He remains in the hearts of his fans through his words, but
sentences like, “Poets candle the pilot light where language hides from itself”
died with 70 year old Pat Conroy last March.
Beverly
Dossett, the book’s reviewer, introduced the author (who we had to tear away
from the literary laps of those legends who preceded him!) in the flesh of John
Magee who took off his Chris Cleave hat and replaced it with Mr. Conroy’s. He
provided a brief background of his life and an overview of his year teaching
eighteen black children divorced from society living on an isolated island off
the coast of South Carolina. His job as the “white schoolteacher” was to
educate his students but instead they taught him….to look at life through a
different lens. “They changed my life and I feel this book, The
Water is Wide, was my first real book…like a firstborn child.” A few of
the students crossed the water safely as one became a teacher, another, a
nurse, a Gullah cookbook writer, and one worked as the assistant manager of a
local Publix grocery store.
Gullahs are descendants
of enslaved Africans whose origins
lie along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia and the adjacent Sea Islands
such as Daufuskie Island (aka Yamacraw in the book.) They can be traced to the
transatlantic slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Settlers
in America struggled to find a crop that would produce sufficient revenue for
England discovering rice was best suited for the coastal climate and the
Africans from Sierra Leone were “imported” to farm this new crop. White plantation
owners succumbed to Malaria and yellow fever leaving a handful of white managers
and trusted Africans known as drivers to tend to the rice crop, resulting in a
black majority in the colony by 1708. Because the slaves derived from diverse
regions, they developed a creole-type language in order to communicate. Their
religion, based on Christianity practiced by their white masters, differs as their
faith includes communal prayer, song and dance….plus witchcraft.
The
Water is Wide, written
in 1972, is honored by the National Education Association – a “must
read for new and veteran teachers. Conroy writes of a universal theme, young
idealistic man sets out to change the world and runs into a brick wall. His
teaching job of elementary age black children on a lonely outpost between
Savannah and Hilton Head forced him to step outside the box. Giving out
textbooks and administering spelling tests was not going to work with this
group. The majority of the children didn’t know what country they lived in,
could not recite the alphabet or read or write, thought the Civil War was
fought between the Germans and Japanese, had never heard of an ocean much less
know that it was the Atlantic Ocean that lapped onto their beaches every day,
or could add simple numbers. The septic days of segregation were easy…the black
schools where the sons and daughters of cotton pickers were herded together,
ruled by black principals who played their role with downcast eyes. Pat knew
there “was a river rising flooding the marshes and threatening dry land”…the
established black/white divide was disappearing at least from an educational
standpoint. His challenge, to find a level of communication with these children
to allow them to see a world outside of their walls….to encourage a desire to
leave the nest and to give them what was necessary to take that first step. The
book, filled with humor, descriptive language, and a cast of characters so over
the top if this was a work of fiction, they would be unbelievable. There is no
telling what impact Pat could have had if he had not been fired after one year,
but the literary world benefitted from a failed teaching career.
We discussed the Dallas
Morning News article offering lessons to Texas educators and leaders on the
success Singapore has enjoyed because of their dedication to teaching as a
profession on the same level and pay scale as an engineer. Their top students
fare as well as those in Texas but the difference surfaces with the average
student. Singapore, roughly the size of Austin and a developing world country
in the 1960’s, now has a higher living standard than ours; require their
students to be linguistically and literally bilingual, and their teachers are
regarded in an elite industry. Teacher applicants have to be in the top third
of their high school class to apply and only seventy per year are accepted out
of thousands. They endure extensive training and “quality control” type
evaluations before trusted to educate the children and only answer to one
government entity in charge of education. Pat Conroy agreed with their theory –
“a true quality teacher loves the students coming to you each year.” Bookers
shared personal experiences as teachers, students, and parents recognizing that
a teacher’s passion often suffocates inside bureaucratic red tape and the chain
of disillusionment and frustration surfaces in poor teaching and burnout….and
everyone suffers.
On the Business side:
MN’s other book club, the Dauphin Island
Book Club, held their first meeting in January to discuss A Man Called Ove. Eleven
attended for the review by MN and live sister-prop, Pam, posing as Sonja in a
wheelchair with a stuffed cat on her lap. Her group’s comments, “It’s going to
be impossible to follow that.” The legend lives on!
We discussed a possible book for our March
selection, Orphan # 8, a historical novel inspired by true events by Kim
van Alkemade. MN has read it and highly recommends it. I’m about 25% through
and will save my recommendation until I’m finished….soon I hope. So far, I love
it. The story is of a woman who must choose between revenge and mercy when she
encounters the doctor who subjected her to dangerous medical experiments in a
New York City Jewish orphanage years before. There is a thread of a lesbian
relationship throughout the book, but it is subtle. We also discussed selecting
one of Fannie Flagg’s books, The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion.
Bookers has supported Henderson County
Library’s fundraiser each year. The 5th annual Books in Bloom event will be held March 31, 2017
at First United Methodist Church,
225 Lovers Lane, Athens, Texas. The speaker is New York
Times bestselling, award-winning historian Sam C. Gwynne author of the
incredible story of how Hal Mumme and Mike Leach—two unknown coaches who
revolutionized American football in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s—changed the way
the game is played at every level, from high school to the NFL. The
Perfect Pass is a perfect book about football—and the transformative
power of innovation. Sam Gwynne brings the same remarkable reporting and
storytelling skills he used in Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel
Yell, revealing the dramatic history behind the passing revolution
that disrupted and forever changed America’s favorite sport changing it from a
run-dominated sport to a pass-dominated sport.
We didn’t know if this was going to be something Bookers would be
interested in this year but who knew….the volunteer hands flew up…(crept might
be a better word) and Patty Evans, Pat Faherty and Cherry Fugitt have agreed to
spearhead the event and are already planning the table decorations. THANK YOU
so much as we love this event. The tickets are $40.00 per person and it is
imperative we reserve a table for 8 early so if you are interested, please
email me by January 20. If we have more interest, we can acquire some
additional seats at another table. When I get your commitment, I’ll write one
check and you can reimburse me.
COLOR CODING SYSTEM
WHITE: LIGHT READ
PINK: MODERATELY
CHALLENGING
RED: CHALLENGING
February
14th: Miss
Jane by Brad Watson, set in rural Mississippi early 20th
century and inspired by his aunt’s true story.
DEEP PINK
Reviewer:
Jean Alexander
Home
of Pat Faherty
March 14th: Book TBD
Reviewer: Patty
Evans
Home
of Jean Alexander
April
11th: The
Girl Who Wrote In Silk, by Kelli Estes, debut
PINK
The
protagonist discovers an elaborately stitched piece of fabric hidden in her
deceased aunt’s island estate revealing a connection with a young Chinese girl
mysteriously driven from her home a century before.
Reviewer: Pat
Faherty
Home
of Rokhshie Malone
May 2nd Earlier date due to travel conflict
Book-
TBD
Reviewer:
Barbara Creach
Wine
& Cheese evening meeting at the home of Melanie Prebis.
Happy Reading,
JoDee
