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39 pages 1 hour read

Janisse Ray

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Janisse RayNonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1999

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Themes

Importance of Preserving the Longleaf Pine Forest Ecosystem

Though Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a memoir, it also functions as a piece of activist writing: Ray seeks to persuade her readers of the necessity of preserving and regenerating Georgia’s longleaf pine forests. Rather than make her argument in the traditional essay form, Ray explores the longleaf pine forests through a variety of angles in a series of short chapters, arguing for the pine forests’ preservation on both scientific and emotional grounds.

 

Through Ray’s ecological descriptions of the longleaf pine forest ecosystem, she underscores how only large-scale forest regeneration will allow for the ecosystem’s survival. Many of the species that inhabit the longleaf pine forests require, for their survival, a forest spread over long swaths of land: The red-cockaded woodpecker, for instance, must be able to interact with several different woodpecker clans across an entire landscape.

 

Ray describes how the interdependence between species has led to “a clan of animals […] bound to the community of longleaf” (141). As the pine forests’ animals have evolved to live symbiotically with each other, the loss of a single species could cause the entire ecosystem to collapse. Though some loggers have tried replacing the longleaf forests with pine plantations, Ray argues that these only create a false environment that fails to provide the proper conditions for species survival.

 

Ray also employs creative writing to convince her readers of the need to preserve the forests. In Chapter 22, Ray inhabits the voice of John Audubon’s ghost in the afterlife. Ray writes an imagined letter from ornithologist James Audubon to a friend, describing his fears for the survival of Bachman’s sparrow: “[The sparrows] have become quite abundant on my rambles, which can mean only one thing: they become less so in the world below. I welcome the blessed sparrows” (206). Ray’s letter imagines Audubon feeling a deep sadness and remorse over the loss of the bird’s natural habitat. In Chapter 12, Ray imagines God angered over logging of the Earth’s forests. In these more imaginative chapters, Ray appeals to reader’s emotional sides, arguing against logging due to its destruction of the Earth’s natural beauty.  

Interconnectedness Between Humans and the Natural World

A major theme that Ray explores in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is the way in which humans are deeply intertwined with their surrounding landscapes. Rather than treat humans and nature as separate entities, Ray insists on viewing humans as a single part of a larger ecosystem. Ray often explores this idea through her own personal sense of identification with the natural world. In the opening chapter, Ray relates her parents’ story of finding her underneath bushes in the woods, and describes herself as a “child of pine” (5). Ray also uses figurative language to underscore her relation to the natural world, asserting that the landscape “owns my body” (13). Elsewhere, Ray writes that “I carry the landscape inside like an ache” (4). This sense of connection with nature becomes the basis for Ray’s environmentalist worldview. By understanding herself as only a piece of a larger ecosystem, she becomes convinced of the necessity of preserving the natural world she inhabits.

 

Ray also explores how a lack of ecological consciousness leads to environmental devastation. Ray’s ancestors, the Crackers, begin logging the pine forests in the 1800s to supply lumber for the massively expanding railroad industry. The Crackers hold little regard for the forests, and destroy a majority of the natural woods within a 50-year span. Ray’s identification with the forests also means that she feels this destruction as a trauma for which she bears responsibility: “More than anything else, what happened to the longleaf country speaks for us. These are my people; our legacy is ruination” (87). However, Ray also recognizes that her ancestors’ logging must be understood within a larger social context, and she explores how “the land itself has been the victim of social dilemmas–racial injustice, lack of education, and dire poverty” (165). Faced with severe poverty, the Crackers have little choice but to log the forests so as to ensure their survival. In Ray’s view, one cannot separate social injustices from environmental destruction. 

Women’s Roles in the Rural South

Throughout Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Ray explores how Southern ideas of femininity impact the various women in her life. Ray’s family ascribes to traditional ideas of women’s roles, where women are responsible for cooking, housework, and raising the children. Though Ray loves Daddy and her grandfather Charlie, she also recognizes how difficult they make the lives of Mama and Clyo, their respective wives. Clyo is abandoned by Charlie and must raise eight children, and the struggle of caring for her family eventually leaves her so exhausted that she completely lacks any desire to care for her own health. Mama, meanwhile, is often forced to care for both the family and the junkyard business when Daddy is suffering from mental illness.

 

Though Ray admires her female relatives’ strength and tenacity, she also longs to break free from traditional ideas of femininity. As a child, Ray refuses to assist Mama in the housework, questioning why the boys aren’t made to help clean. Ray eventually comes to respect Mama, while recognizing that she herself needs to lead a more independent lifestyle: “Yet [Mama] is the most steadfast, generous, and honorable person I have ever known […] and because of this, she approached sainthood. On these terms I did not want to be a saint” (204). In college, Ray befriends a “mountain woman” whose fierce independence provides Ray with a different model of femininity. The two quickly bond over their shared environmentalism and rejection of traditional women’s roles: “our desires were the same: to live simply, close to nature […] to be as self-sufficient as possible” (261). 

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