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Title details for The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy - Available

The Water Is Wide

by Pat Conroy
ebook
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Readers know Pat Conroy as a novelist of great reputation and success, but his first notable achievement as a writer was an autobiographical book called The Water Is Wide, published in 1972 -- the story of a year in his life as a teacher of poor African-American children on a coastal island in South Carolina. The New York Times called The Water Is Wide "a hell of a good story," and that observation points to one of Conroy's supreme gifts as a writer of fiction -- the ability to craft an irresistible narrative. In his later novels, Conroy has used details from his own life and experience, though The Water Is Wide is vibrantly told in the first person by Conroy himself. After graduating from The Citadel, Conroy returned to Beaufort, S.C., to teach in the same high school he attended a few years earlier. The time was the late 1960s, and his idealism and his frustration with the complacent world to which he had returned soon inspired him to apply to the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps did not respond, so he impulsively decided to go after an unusual job he had heard about -- teaching virtually illiterate children in an old-fashioned school house on Yamacraw Island, reached only by boat, a sad but lushly beautiful place the 20th century had almost completely bypassed. Whatever he expected, what Conroy found on Yamacraw was far worse. The school received little in the way of support, financially or otherwise, and the situation forced Conroy to improvise wildly as a teacher. His students never seemed to grasp his name, so he became known as "Conrack." He spent a year teaching on Yamacraw, succeeding sometimes by teasing and cajoling his demoralized students into learning and even getting excited about a world beyond their misery on the island. Inevitably, he was too successful -- his freewheeling methods and exuberant energy alarmed the school authorities, who fired him. The experience clearly transformed Conroy, as it must have transformed the children he taught, though he had few illusions in the end. "Of the Yamacraw children I can say little," he wrote in conclusion, "For them I leave a single prayer: that the river is good to them in the crossing."
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Publisher: RosettaBooks Edition: ebook

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 0795300727
  • Release date: January 29, 2002

PDF ebook

  • ISBN: 0795300727
  • File size: 809 KB
  • Release date: January 29, 2002

Formats

OverDrive Read
PDF ebook

subjects

Classic Literature Drama Fiction

Languages

English

Levels

Text Difficulty:9-12

Readers know Pat Conroy as a novelist of great reputation and success, but his first notable achievement as a writer was an autobiographical book called The Water Is Wide, published in 1972 -- the story of a year in his life as a teacher of poor African-American children on a coastal island in South Carolina. The New York Times called The Water Is Wide "a hell of a good story," and that observation points to one of Conroy's supreme gifts as a writer of fiction -- the ability to craft an irresistible narrative. In his later novels, Conroy has used details from his own life and experience, though The Water Is Wide is vibrantly told in the first person by Conroy himself. After graduating from The Citadel, Conroy returned to Beaufort, S.C., to teach in the same high school he attended a few years earlier. The time was the late 1960s, and his idealism and his frustration with the complacent world to which he had returned soon inspired him to apply to the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps did not respond, so he impulsively decided to go after an unusual job he had heard about -- teaching virtually illiterate children in an old-fashioned school house on Yamacraw Island, reached only by boat, a sad but lushly beautiful place the 20th century had almost completely bypassed. Whatever he expected, what Conroy found on Yamacraw was far worse. The school received little in the way of support, financially or otherwise, and the situation forced Conroy to improvise wildly as a teacher. His students never seemed to grasp his name, so he became known as "Conrack." He spent a year teaching on Yamacraw, succeeding sometimes by teasing and cajoling his demoralized students into learning and even getting excited about a world beyond their misery on the island. Inevitably, he was too successful -- his freewheeling methods and exuberant energy alarmed the school authorities, who fired him. The experience clearly transformed Conroy, as it must have transformed the children he taught, though he had few illusions in the end. "Of the Yamacraw children I can say little," he wrote in conclusion, "For them I leave a single prayer: that the river is good to them in the crossing."
Expand title description text
Classic Literature Drama Fiction
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