One of the best books i've read this year. A powerful, honest account of trying hard to help people against impossible odds, and the growing that came with it.
Quotes:
I was becoming convinced that the world was a colorful, variegated grab bag full of bastards.
The children were subdued, passive, and exceedingly polite. [...] It was a yes-sir, no-sir world I had entered. [...] On Mrs. Brown’s desk was an item that caught and held my eye. It was a leather strap, smooth and very thick.
Only a thoroughbred do-gooder can appreciate the feeling, the roseate, dawnlike, and nauseating glow that enveloped me on the return trip that day. I had found a place to absorb my wildest do-gooding tendency.
I know colored people better than you do. That’s because I am one myself. You have to keep your foot on them all the time. Step on them. Step on them every day and keep steppin’ on them when they gets out of line. If you have any trouble, Mama Brown will be right next door.
Sweet little Jesus, I thought, as I weaved between the desks, these kids don’t know crap.
“I slop de hog. I feed de cow. I feed two dog. I go to Savannah on the boat.”
“Have you ever heard of the United States of America?” I asked. “Oh, yeh,” Mary, one of the eighth-grade girls said. “I heared it. I heared it in I pledge a legent to the flag of United States of America.”
Among the peoples of the world I am not universally admired for the bell-like clarity of my diction. Words slide out of my mouth like fat fish.
“Saul,” I intoned, trying to sound like a miniature Yahweh.
Christ must do a lot of puking when he reflects upon the good works done in his name.
“Good Christian people” was the most cynical epithet in Zeke’s repertoire. He and Ida had been very active members of the local Baptist church until the congregation voted to close the church if a nigger ever tried to attend a service. Zeke and Ida simply never went back after that.
One attribute made this house a palace on Yamacraw. It possessed a shiny, glistening white commode, a treasure of inestimable value and an invention that overshadows the wheel as necessary for man’s comfort and convenience.
One noteworthy thing about South Carolina is the quality of school-bus drivers in the state. To qualify for a bus license one must have reached puberty and be able to recite the alphabet without stuttering.
parables of love and Jesus sung by a blue-eyed mother, a renegade Baptist, a converted Catholic, a soldier of the Lord
I could hear some white voice coming from some collective unconscious deep within me saying, “They don’t know any better. They are happy this way.” Yet all around me, in the grinning faces of my students, I could see a crime, so ugly that it could be interpreted as a condemnation of an entire society, a nation be damned, a history of wickedness—these children before me did not have a goddam chance of sharing in the incredible wealth and affluence of the country that claimed them, a country that failed them, a country that needed but did not deserve deliverance.
life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation
Richie Matta, whose career sparked brightly then faded like memory when he left the Delta, made his comeback and made it big with eighteen kids on Yamacraw Island.
It took me a long time but I soon became aware of an underlying, pervasive fixation for violence among the people of the island.
Of course, I understood very well why people drank on the island. It was the single form of entertainment, the social medium that bound the island together, the only sport, the only recreation, the focal point of island activity.
Yet I worried that I did things more by instinct than by logic and would be hard-pressed to explain why I let the twins mold clay when their literacy was questionable, except that they seemed to enjoy it.
And in that single moment I realized something very important. Piedmont could not scare me. Nor could Bennington. Nor could the assembled board of education in all its measly glory. For in crossing the river twice daily I had come closer to more basic things.
His power was economic and emotional, not spiritual or supernatural. Compared to the river that flowed even as we stared sullenly at each other, Piedmont was a nothing and so was I.
My friends were a strange conglomerate of long-hairs, Marines, and the attractive wives of powerful husbands.
On June 30, 1970, before mother, wife, and friends, Conrack let the bastards have it.
I do not react well to crisis. My first thought was to race over to Piedmont’s house, knock at his door, and put a fist against his jaw.
I learned that politicians are not supposed to help people. They simply listen to people, nod their heads painfully, commiserate at proper intervals, promise to do all they can, and then do nothing.
Conrack discovered that afternoon, much to his dismay, that he had a bit of demagogue in him.
In essence, I tried to teach them to embrace life openly, to reflect upon its mysteries, rejoice in its surprises, and to reject its cruelties. Like other teachers, I failed. Teaching is a record of failures. But the glory of teaching is in the attempt.
SO CONRACK, defrocked and slightly dishonored, retired to his room to write about his year on Yamacraw.
I saw the necessity of living and accepting bullcrap in my midst.
To survive in the future I would have to learn the complex art of ass-kissing, that honorable American custom that makes the world go ’round. Survival is the most important thing. As a bona fide ass-kisser, I might lose a measure of self-respect, but I could be teaching and helping kids.
I also saw that Piedmont and Bennington were not evil men. They were just predictably mediocre.
They did not feel the need for redemption, because they had already been redeemed.
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