Janisse Ray

Questions and Comments on Ecology of a Cracker Childhood:
by Dimitri Hammond

(Pages 175-273)


"The moss was cool carpet, here a nook for the kitchen, a space between roots for a living room there. It was another world, one of the mind, and in that world the trees were home" (Ray, 179).
--Where were your secret play areas?

"'Janisse! Whatever you put in the oven is burned to a crisp'" (181).
--Your own cooking failures?

"I knew how well Grandmama guarded our secret, and I wondered how many other secrets she kept, and why" (186).
--Did your grandparents or other relatives keep secrets from your parents about you? Why do you think they would?

"...because they're so docile that they've been overcollected for pets..." (188).
--Are collecting pets bad for the environment?
"The professor hatched her eggs..." (190)
--Are some endangered species better off in captivity? Would she have successfully laid all twelve of those eggs outside of captivity? Is there any benefit from exposing her to the populus (students, etc)?

"On a searing day in July my parents eloped" (194)
--Anyone have any eloping stories?

"Once I read Thoreau I wanted none of it" (202).
--What did she mean?

"'Tomboy,' Mama called me."
--What is associated with the Tomboy stereotype and how is it viewed today?

"Perhaps something could have been different for me. Certainly not adulthood, for we become our heart's desires, but childhood--could the natural world I now revere have opened to me? Suppose someone had found my father the boy and said, If you look closely, you will find palmetto bugs hardly bigger than apple seeds, and their iridescent black shells are walking onyx. And, A yellow-rumped warbler is in the wax myrtle. The eggs of fairy shrimp spread by wind. Suppose. What then?" (216)
--What one thing got you interested in nature? Or at least interested enough to want to take this class.
--Could this "suppose" effect everyone? Would these kind of revelations to younger children change the world?
--Do you feel that this is the main purpose of this book?

"The maps inside their heads no longer matches the terrain" (219).
--Do you think the salamander's brains will eventually "resolder" to the new mapping of the terrain?

"He could not have survived losing one of us, he knew, so he was afraid. Irrationally afraid" (227)
--What do you think she means by irrationally afraid?

"On Sunday afternoons we'd target shoot" (228)
--Do you think this practice with the firearms prevented them from playing with the guns and accidently injuring one another?

"We are no match for nature; nature is of God, of eternity: deadly" (233).
--Do you think this signifies some resentment of her religious upbringing, of a fear of something Godly?
--Do you think her love for nature stems from a respect for it brought forth in some way from fear?

"'Okay, who can answer this? If thirty-three and a third is a third of a dollar, what's a third of a dollar and a half?'"(249).
--Okay, who can answer this?

"There is a way to have your cake and eat it too; a way to log yet preserve a forest. Leon Neel knows how" (251).
--Do you think this method would really work on a large scale and replace clearcut altogether?

"...that first year away I heard the word environmentalism and first saw it in action" (263).
--What does environmentalism mean to you?

"Without children to support, some part of my father had turned back to land" (265).
--Did the absence of Frank's necessity for extreme protection over his children lead him to revert back to nature and learn to love it?

Page 272.
--Do you think Ray is implying that the pinewoods are the source of the South's heritage and identity? What about her daddy's identity?

Page 273.
--Do you think Ray meant in this that we could reach a form of eternal life by giving the gift of nature to our descendants?


**Why do you think Ray wrote this book? What was her main purpose? Do you think it had the effect on you that she was hoping?