Thursday, August 07, 2008

Wild Card Quilt (a book review) along with "the state of the mule"


Janisse Ray, Wild Card Quilt: The Ecology of Home (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed, 2003), 308 pages, a few black & white photos

I enjoyed Ray’s “Ecology of a Childhood Cracker” so much I sought out more of her books. She ends her first book with having left home for college in the Georgia highlands. Now, seventeen years later, Ray returns, moving into her deceased Grandmother’s “heart pine” home, a place that might fall in had not the termites been holding hands (19). She’s a single parent with a young son. She has a Master’s Degree and has lived in Montana and Florida. Through essays, Ray gives us a glimpse of her life as she tries to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong and show that one can come home again. But it’s not an easy trip and at times Ray is ready to throw in the towel and strike out for more promising lands.

This book is multi-faceted. On the one hand, it’s about the role “place” plays in our lives and stories. I love her idea of how we learn place from light (275) and how she describes the passing of time by the shadows and the rising and setting of the sun (160f). Reading this, I recalled winters in the longleaf forest that use to be behind the home where I grew up and how the trees would casts such long shadows. The book is also about relationships and Ray writes honestly about her relationship with her parents, her deceased grandmother, Uncle Percy, her son, and a sister who is estranged from her family but who is reunited with them at Janisse’s wedding. The book is also about longing for relationships as Ray mentions going out with another single woman in search of a man (80f), and how she finally found her “man” reading a book at a folk music festival (287f). Some of the stories are a little sappy for my taste, almost like chick-lit, but I enjoyed them anyway. Throughout the book, one learns of the loss the rural south and what it means for the ecosystem. I hope she keeps writing, we need more voices that understand the interconnectedness between the human race and nature.

One senses grace in Ray’s life. I love her story of judging a pork cooking contest. She had not eaten pork in 20 years, but finally agreed to be a judge. A pot of Brunswick stew took first place. (The link is to my recipe for Brunswick Stew. I was using chicken, but pork is also commonly used.) Concluding the essay, she writes:
-
From the pork-cooking contest I learned that many things are above dogma. Respect, for example. Love. The requirements of our place in a community may land us in the middle of odd, funny stories we never schemed for ourselves. What we are asked to contribute may lie outside the lines of what we imagine. Some of our participation we can’t design. (273)
-
Many of these essays elicit a personal response from me. I felt a tinge of guilt when she laments over those Southerners who love the wild having fled the South (189). I’m one of them (although I’ve been adopted by the intermountain west). Thinking back, I was most involved with the Sierra Club when I lived in the South, at a time when the group wasn’t popular, but it seemed to me that they were the only ones in the late 70s talking about the need to preserve ecosystems. I also became nostalgic reading about wire grass and long leaf pines, two species that played an important role in the worlds in which Ray and I had been “raised up.” She speaks of coming into a longleaf forest that “stood out like the Kingdom of Heaven, suddenly tall and very green, praising the sky” (116). Finally, melancholy swept over me when I learned that she discovers her “soul-mate” while he’s reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ve read that book several times, the first being back in the 70s and never found a nature loving woman with a southern drawl that was interested in the book. If one said anything about me reading the book, it was probably about how motorcycles are dangerous or that Zen is some kind of pagan religion.

Now, for the state of the mule. The mule is fine! Page 43. There is a reason, I’m going off on this silly tangent, I’m entering one of Maggie’s contest! Nothing happened to the mule except that he got wet in a thunderstorm when one of the Tillman boys left him out in front of the church in which he was seeking shelter from the storm. Of course, the mule’s back may have also gotten a little sore. In the darkness, as the boy climbed up on the porch, he thought he saw the devil’s face in the church’s window. He jumped back on the mule and rode home as fast as he could. It turns out a goat was also taking refuge from the storm in the country church whose doors didn’t completely shut. This was one of the “Ray’s” family stories from the past and is found on page 43.
-
For other book reviews by Sage, click here.
For Semicolon's Saturday's list of book reviews in blogs, click here.

18 comments:

  1. Yeah, heaven forbid you get in touch with your chick-lit side.
    :-) What are the numbers in parenthesis for? Have you begin reviewing books in proper written book review format?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Murf, I'll go out next week and OD on macho! The parenthesis are page numbers for quotes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sage, you make every book you read sound well worth the time!

    Thanks for the visit. What you said about the car is the same as Mr. kenju thought. The Man Upstairs must have been looking out for me!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ha what you said about your Southern women is funny. So, have you tried looking for a "northern" woman instead? :)

    So a goat went to church? Amen! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yay! More about Janisse Ray! I finished "Ecology" in May, I think. I'd forgotten there was more to her story. Putting it on TBR list as well as the zen/motorcycle book. Might be needing it to find my "Mr. Right"...ya never know and I say always be prepared.:)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I didn't get the impression this book would be sappy at all. Relationships and nature--sounds like a good mix to me. I need to get a list of all your books because I'm losing track of what you've reviewed and recommended. I still haven't picked up the Hiaasen book, "Skinny Dip," yet...but I will.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Having grown up in Florida, my heart breaks whenever I hear about the ecological plight of the Everglades.

    That a southerner would say "Zen is some kind of pagan religion" - Oh my gosh is that ever the truth! Baptist or bust is the motto down there. Not really, but sometimes it seems like it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Kenju, you'd think I'd get a commission, would you. (I don't)

    Mother Hen, that was in my past, at preasent I'm not looking for a woman even if I'm reading Zen and Mothercycle...

    Susie, I'll be interested in knowing more about what you think of Zen... I've always thought of it as more of a guy book. It really isn't about Zen and uses the motorcycle engine as a metaphor

    Scarlett, at the bottom of each review, I put a link to a listing of all books I've reviewed--you can you it to find out which books I've reviewed. As a Floridian, you need to read Hiaasen.

    Epiphany, have you read Hiaasen's "Skinny Dip"? It's a funny mystery that deals wtih ecological issues in the Everglades. One day I want to paddle the trail that goes through the Everglades.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Been away for a few days.

    Thanks for this review.

    Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  10. So when it says (80f), that must be page 80 but what does the 'f' stand for?

    ReplyDelete
  11. glad your mule did better than mine!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Sherman, welcome back!

    Murf, "f" means following, generally indicating the beginning of a story

    Diane, May your mule rest in peace!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Great review--I'm going to have to add this to my TBR list!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Dang, the mule remains unscathed. Well, I guess since this is nonfiction, I should be okay with healthy mule and only crave blood-n-guts with a ficional mule.

    It is funny. Out of all the Mudbound readers, not one has entered the contest!?! We're talking first edition Larry Brown!!!

    Change the subject, since I cannot stand in one place too long...I wanted to mention to you while on the road in Minnesota we stopped at a studio in Grand Marias (sp). I was looking for North Woods art, but found books against one wall of the store. The shelves were in an acordian shape running the length, and broken down into subjects. What drew me in was the local books such as native trees of Minnesota-blah blah-when I run across three packed shelves of Civil War books and maps! I'm always learning. Before that moment, I would have nevah considered Minnesota as even having enough men to fight. Vacations are so educational! :D

    ReplyDelete
  15. Smallworld, I hope you enjoy it!

    Maggie, sorry to disappoint you on the mule. Diane read Mudbound and entered the mule contest. One of the great Civil War historians is Michigander Bruce Catton. He also has a wonderful boyhood memoir of growing up in the upper lower pennisla titled "Waiting for the Morning Train."

    ReplyDelete
  16. Hey, Sage. Michele sent me today. It's nice to see a review of a different book; I've been seeing a lot of the same books over and over again. I think Michele knew I needed the variety.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I'll look for it Sage, and thanks for pointing me to Diane's entry! Not only am I behind on bloglines, but my own blog needs to be read! *blushing* :)

    ReplyDelete
  18. I am yet to read about a mule. For that matter, I have not been reading anything!

    ReplyDelete