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The Water Is Wide
“A powerfully moving book . . . You will laugh, you will weep, you will be proud and you will rail.” —Charleston News and Courier
Yamacraw Island was haunting, nearly deserted, and beautiful. Separated from the mainland of South Carolina by a wide tidal river, it was accessible only by boat. But for the handful of families that lived on Yamacraw, America was a world away. For years these families lived proudly from the sea until waste from industry destroyed the oyster beds essential to their very existence. Already poor, they knew they would have to face an uncertain future unless, somehow, they learned a new life. But they needed someone to teach them, and their rundown schoolhouse had no teacher.
The Water Is Wide is Pat Conroy’s extraordinary memoir based on his experience as one of two teachers in a two-room schoolhouse, working with children the world had pretty much forgotten. It was a year that changed his life, and one that introduced a group of poor Black children to a world they did not know existed.
“A hell of a good story.” —The New York Times
“[Pat] Conroy cuts through his experiences with a sharp edge of irony. . . . He brings emotion, writing talent and anger to his story.” —Baltimore Sun
Yamacraw Island was haunting, nearly deserted, and beautiful. Separated from the mainland of South Carolina by a wide tidal river, it was accessible only by boat. But for the handful of families that lived on Yamacraw, America was a world away. For years these families lived proudly from the sea until waste from industry destroyed the oyster beds essential to their very existence. Already poor, they knew they would have to face an uncertain future unless, somehow, they learned a new life. But they needed someone to teach them, and their rundown schoolhouse had no teacher.
The Water Is Wide is Pat Conroy’s extraordinary memoir based on his experience as one of two teachers in a two-room schoolhouse, working with children the world had pretty much forgotten. It was a year that changed his life, and one that introduced a group of poor Black children to a world they did not know existed.
“A hell of a good story.” —The New York Times
“[Pat] Conroy cuts through his experiences with a sharp edge of irony. . . . He brings emotion, writing talent and anger to his story.” —Baltimore Sun
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First published January 1, 1972
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About the author
Pat Conroy
89 books4,220 followersPat Conroy (1945 - 2016) was the New York Times bestselling author of two memoirs and seven novels, including The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, and The Lords of Discipline. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature.
Born the eldest of seven children in a rigidly disciplined military household, he attended the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. He briefly became a schoolteacher (which he chronicled in his memoir The Water Is Wide) before publishing his first novel, The Boo. Conroy lived on Fripp Island, South Carolina until his death in 2016.
Conroy passed away on March 4, 2016 at his home from Pancreatic Cancer. He was 70 years old at the time of his death.
Born the eldest of seven children in a rigidly disciplined military household, he attended the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. He briefly became a schoolteacher (which he chronicled in his memoir The Water Is Wide) before publishing his first novel, The Boo. Conroy lived on Fripp Island, South Carolina until his death in 2016.
Conroy passed away on March 4, 2016 at his home from Pancreatic Cancer. He was 70 years old at the time of his death.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,129 reviews
August 28, 2013
This is probably more of a reflection than a"review" I read this book when I first started teaching, and my naive and much younger self wanted to be exactly the kind of teacher Pat Conroy had wanted to be-one who worked with children who needed me and whose lives I could touch in some way-only I would do it better of course! My first teaching job plunked me down in a non-air-conditioned overcrowded school in Little Havana (in the heart of the city of Miami, FL for you non-natives) with 100% of my students hailing from Cuba, South America, Puerto Rico, etc.
Well, life imitates art, I guess. My first year was a pretty miserable failure and I did not achieve my glorified vision of "the Great White non-Hispanic Hope" (Hey, I said I was naive, right?). They ate my upper middle class white butt for lunch! But, man did I LEARN from my kids. Hard lessons to be sure, but critical to my nascent years as a teacher.
That's what this book popping up in my Goodreads wanderings makes me realize. Once I learned that I wasn't the only one in the room with something worthwhile to teach, I really became a teacher. Sometimes it's better to close your mouth and open your ears and hear what the kids have to teach you. I'm still naive, thank goodness, and still hope to make a difference with the teachers I prepare to teach-I just never assume I'm the only one with something to say.
Well, life imitates art, I guess. My first year was a pretty miserable failure and I did not achieve my glorified vision of "the Great White non-Hispanic Hope" (Hey, I said I was naive, right?). They ate my upper middle class white butt for lunch! But, man did I LEARN from my kids. Hard lessons to be sure, but critical to my nascent years as a teacher.
That's what this book popping up in my Goodreads wanderings makes me realize. Once I learned that I wasn't the only one in the room with something worthwhile to teach, I really became a teacher. Sometimes it's better to close your mouth and open your ears and hear what the kids have to teach you. I'm still naive, thank goodness, and still hope to make a difference with the teachers I prepare to teach-I just never assume I'm the only one with something to say.
July 1, 2020
I want everybody to read, no listen to, The Water is Wide. It is that good a book. There are sublime sentences, most often straight out of the mouths of the eighteen black kids whom he's teaching, 1969-970, on Yamacraw Island (Daufuski Island), South Carolina. Until he got kicked out for insubordination after one year as a teacher! That is told at the very beginning so it is no spoiler. He is a fantastic teacher. He is the kind of teacher these kids needed.
In the prologue the author says how he felt the narration of his book by Dan Jon Miller was pure perfection. It captures the essence of his kids' lives. It improves what is at bottom a wonderful book.
He tells his story with humor, yet its topic is very serious.
In the prologue the author says how he felt the narration of his book by Dan Jon Miller was pure perfection. It captures the essence of his kids' lives. It improves what is at bottom a wonderful book.
He tells his story with humor, yet its topic is very serious.
September 12, 2016
This is an enlightening book and also obviously the book of a young man as it is at times both overwhelmingly idealistic and alarmingly naive. Pat Conroy agreed to teach for a year on Yamacraw Island off the coast of South Carolina. There he encounters a world apart, conditions unlike anything he has encountered in his teaching on the mainland. He is to teach the children of the island, the people who used to live from fishing but now can't support themselves from polluted waters. He encounters children who are savvy but unschooled for all the time they have spent in the classroom. He learns of various types of prejudice that attack them individually and as a group in order to keep them untaught and unteachable. There is an overarching lack of concern as long as discipline is maintained.
Conroy writes of his experiments in teaching methods and his gambles with the authorities to try new activities with the children. He also daringly spares the rod! This is an eye-opening memoir, even though it is no longer a new book. It remains a worthwhile read. Perhaps my greatest take-away from it is to try to know the people to whom I speak, with whom I would like to work or deal. The surface definitely does not reveal all.
Conroy's prose is beautiful; he captures the natural world around him so wonderfully. He also captures the individual children and their families so well. You will feel that you have met many of them by the time you have finished reading this book.
Conroy writes of his experiments in teaching methods and his gambles with the authorities to try new activities with the children. He also daringly spares the rod! This is an eye-opening memoir, even though it is no longer a new book. It remains a worthwhile read. Perhaps my greatest take-away from it is to try to know the people to whom I speak, with whom I would like to work or deal. The surface definitely does not reveal all.
Conroy's prose is beautiful; he captures the natural world around him so wonderfully. He also captures the individual children and their families so well. You will feel that you have met many of them by the time you have finished reading this book.
September 3, 2025
The waterway that separates Daufuskie Island from the mainland of South Carolina does not seem too wide, if one is simply looking at a map. Daufuskie is one of the Sea Islands that are renowned for their natural beauty. Yet it is also a place where the profusion of heavy manufacturing plants around Savannah, Georgia, fostered water pollution that devastated the fishing industry upon which the island’s predominantly African-American residents had long depended for their livelihood. And in the late 1960’s, a youthful and idealistic teacher came over from the mainland to see if he could find ways to help young students on the island prepare for an uncertain future.
In The Water Is Wide, Pat Conroy chronicles in painstaking and often evocative detail his time as a teacher at the one school on Daufuskie (renamed “Yamacraw” for the book’s literary purposes). Conroy finds many obstacles to his work as a new educator on the island. Owing to the neglect of the island’s students by the Beaufort County authorities, the students’ levels of literacy and general awareness are dishearteningly low. When, for example, Conroy tries to use the world map in the classroom to get his students thinking about the larger world beyond Yamacraw, he finds that his students “were geographically illiterate. The world map, pinned on the same spot probably for several years, could have been an anatomical chart of an earthworm for all they knew” (p. 50). Undaunted, however, Conroy does what all good teachers do: he improvises in response to what he observes among his students, and comes up with something new -- in the case of Conroy and Yamacraw, “the pep-rally method of education” whereby “a certain part of the morning was set aside for a daily chant or incantation to the gods of basic knowledge” (p. 51).
The students, for all that they have been overlooked by a school system that does not care one bit about their educational achievements, are perceptive young people, each one with his or her own talents: one may have a great gift for memorization or storytelling, while another, who only mumbles when asked to speak in class, turns out to have a singing voice that is “high and clear, almost bell-like” (p. 100) when Conroy brings a microphone into the class and invites the students to sing. The students tend to mispronounce Conroy’s name as “Conrack”; but they can tell that he genuinely cares about their learning, and a strong rapport between teacher and students takes hold. Conroy exposes them to classical music, takes them to the mainland to enjoy the first Halloween celebration they have ever known, and even organizes a field trip to Washington, D.C.
Conroy’s real problem is with the people who are theoretically his colleagues in the educational enterprise. The island school’s principal, Mrs. Brown, believes only in rote memorization, and seeks to “motivate” her students by frequently beating them with a strap she calls “Doctor Medicine”; she states her pedagogical philosophy to Conroy at one point by saying, “You can’t control these children without a strap. I know 'em. I know the only thing they listen to is Doctor Medicine” (p. 150).
Another of Conroy’s antagonists is the county school superintendent, Henry Piedmont, whom Conroy describes as “The mill-town kid who scratched his way to the top. Horatio Alger, who knew how to floor a man with a quick chop to the gonads. He was a product of the upcountry of South Carolina, the Bible Belt, sand-lot baseball, knife fights under the bleachers” (p. 2). Piedmont is also quick to make much of his religiosity, particularly when he is in one of his many public confrontations with Conroy. Piedmont seems to know what many Southerners have known before and since: if you can "out-Jesus" your opponent in a public disagreement anywhere in the American South, then you already have the battle more than halfway won.
The premise of The Water Is Wide may be familiar to some who have not read Conroy’s 1972 book, as the book was adapted in 1974 into Martin Ritt’s critically acclaimed film Conrack, with Jon Voight as Conroy and a fine cast that includes Paul Winfield and Hume Cronyn. Conroy’s work seems to lend itself well to film adaptation.
I read The Water Is Wide while on a trip to Myrtle Beach; while I knew that I was on the same coast, in the same state, looking out at the same ocean, I found the contrast between the resort culture of Myrtle Beach on the one hand, and the poverty and deprivation of Daufuskie on the other, simply overwhelming. When I Googled Daufuskie, I found that the isolated island of yesteryear is now dominated by private residential clubs and golf resorts. I hope that things have gotten better for the African-American citizens of Daufuskie. I am not overly optimistic.
There are bases for criticizing The Water Is Wide. It is Conroy’s memoir, and Conroy does not claim to be objective; but I cannot help wondering how some of the other participants in the period covered by the book would describe Conroy’s time on “Yamacraw.” Conroy also has a decided tendency to overwrite; in his efforts to capture in prose the lush beauty of the Low Country of South Carolina, he sometimes tries too hard and lapses into purple prose. But I appreciate the spirit that motivates those moments of overwriting; Conroy comes across as a big, open-hearted Irishman who has loads of energy and commitment, along with stories that he really wants to tell. A real writer, to my mind, is someone who simply can’t stop writing; and Pat Conroy is that kind of writer.
I will conclude with one brief bit of advice. Be nice to everybody. It is a good thing to do for its own sake; and moreover, you never know when somebody that you’ve treated badly will go on to be a famous writer whose devastating and unfavorable portrait of you lives on when you and the work you did are otherwise gone and forgotten. Many readers of this book are likely to wonder, as I did, how the real-life equivalents of Henry Piedmont and Mrs. Brown felt when they read The Water Is Wide.
In The Water Is Wide, Pat Conroy chronicles in painstaking and often evocative detail his time as a teacher at the one school on Daufuskie (renamed “Yamacraw” for the book’s literary purposes). Conroy finds many obstacles to his work as a new educator on the island. Owing to the neglect of the island’s students by the Beaufort County authorities, the students’ levels of literacy and general awareness are dishearteningly low. When, for example, Conroy tries to use the world map in the classroom to get his students thinking about the larger world beyond Yamacraw, he finds that his students “were geographically illiterate. The world map, pinned on the same spot probably for several years, could have been an anatomical chart of an earthworm for all they knew” (p. 50). Undaunted, however, Conroy does what all good teachers do: he improvises in response to what he observes among his students, and comes up with something new -- in the case of Conroy and Yamacraw, “the pep-rally method of education” whereby “a certain part of the morning was set aside for a daily chant or incantation to the gods of basic knowledge” (p. 51).
The students, for all that they have been overlooked by a school system that does not care one bit about their educational achievements, are perceptive young people, each one with his or her own talents: one may have a great gift for memorization or storytelling, while another, who only mumbles when asked to speak in class, turns out to have a singing voice that is “high and clear, almost bell-like” (p. 100) when Conroy brings a microphone into the class and invites the students to sing. The students tend to mispronounce Conroy’s name as “Conrack”; but they can tell that he genuinely cares about their learning, and a strong rapport between teacher and students takes hold. Conroy exposes them to classical music, takes them to the mainland to enjoy the first Halloween celebration they have ever known, and even organizes a field trip to Washington, D.C.
Conroy’s real problem is with the people who are theoretically his colleagues in the educational enterprise. The island school’s principal, Mrs. Brown, believes only in rote memorization, and seeks to “motivate” her students by frequently beating them with a strap she calls “Doctor Medicine”; she states her pedagogical philosophy to Conroy at one point by saying, “You can’t control these children without a strap. I know 'em. I know the only thing they listen to is Doctor Medicine” (p. 150).
Another of Conroy’s antagonists is the county school superintendent, Henry Piedmont, whom Conroy describes as “The mill-town kid who scratched his way to the top. Horatio Alger, who knew how to floor a man with a quick chop to the gonads. He was a product of the upcountry of South Carolina, the Bible Belt, sand-lot baseball, knife fights under the bleachers” (p. 2). Piedmont is also quick to make much of his religiosity, particularly when he is in one of his many public confrontations with Conroy. Piedmont seems to know what many Southerners have known before and since: if you can "out-Jesus" your opponent in a public disagreement anywhere in the American South, then you already have the battle more than halfway won.
The premise of The Water Is Wide may be familiar to some who have not read Conroy’s 1972 book, as the book was adapted in 1974 into Martin Ritt’s critically acclaimed film Conrack, with Jon Voight as Conroy and a fine cast that includes Paul Winfield and Hume Cronyn. Conroy’s work seems to lend itself well to film adaptation.
I read The Water Is Wide while on a trip to Myrtle Beach; while I knew that I was on the same coast, in the same state, looking out at the same ocean, I found the contrast between the resort culture of Myrtle Beach on the one hand, and the poverty and deprivation of Daufuskie on the other, simply overwhelming. When I Googled Daufuskie, I found that the isolated island of yesteryear is now dominated by private residential clubs and golf resorts. I hope that things have gotten better for the African-American citizens of Daufuskie. I am not overly optimistic.
There are bases for criticizing The Water Is Wide. It is Conroy’s memoir, and Conroy does not claim to be objective; but I cannot help wondering how some of the other participants in the period covered by the book would describe Conroy’s time on “Yamacraw.” Conroy also has a decided tendency to overwrite; in his efforts to capture in prose the lush beauty of the Low Country of South Carolina, he sometimes tries too hard and lapses into purple prose. But I appreciate the spirit that motivates those moments of overwriting; Conroy comes across as a big, open-hearted Irishman who has loads of energy and commitment, along with stories that he really wants to tell. A real writer, to my mind, is someone who simply can’t stop writing; and Pat Conroy is that kind of writer.
I will conclude with one brief bit of advice. Be nice to everybody. It is a good thing to do for its own sake; and moreover, you never know when somebody that you’ve treated badly will go on to be a famous writer whose devastating and unfavorable portrait of you lives on when you and the work you did are otherwise gone and forgotten. Many readers of this book are likely to wonder, as I did, how the real-life equivalents of Henry Piedmont and Mrs. Brown felt when they read The Water Is Wide.
August 4, 2020
I love Pat Conroy.
I love his books so much that of the few that I have not read, I save them the way some people might save a bottle of Romanee-Conti Burgandy, letting it collect dust for years until there's a moment worthy of its uncorking.
2020 seems like that moment.
The Water is Wide is an autobiographical retelling of his experience as a 22-year old, when having been rejected from the Peace Corps, he took a teaching job at an all-black school on Daufuskie Island (South Carolina).
This book offers a window into the late 60s, when white kids in the South ghoulishly celebrated the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and harangued the black kids at their newly integrated institutions. When white ministers threatened to burn their own churches if a black person dared to attend their services. When school administrators in charge of Daufuskie Island paid more attention to the all-white school, with its one student, and were content to let the black school wither and its black student body be shackled by illiteracy.
Reading this book in 2020, you can see the connective tissue, the cultural DNA passed down from that generation to people today who want a quiet return to those days. Not the night riders and the cross burnings, but an unspoken longing for the "racial purity" of their sororities and country clubs. A time when the N-word could be rigorously employed around the Sunday dinner table.
Pat describes the school administrators as: "Soldiers of the rear guard, captains of a doomed army retreating through the snow, and praying that the shadows of the quick, dark wolves waiting in the cold, would come no closer. They were old men and could not accept the new sun rising out of strange waters. The world was very different now."
I suspect that in his latter years, Pat knew the world would always need a good prodding in the right direction. So when he passed away and his wish was to be buried in a black cemetery (one of the few places where segregation still exists), he was reminding us all that there are still bridges yet to be crossed.
I love his books so much that of the few that I have not read, I save them the way some people might save a bottle of Romanee-Conti Burgandy, letting it collect dust for years until there's a moment worthy of its uncorking.
2020 seems like that moment.
The Water is Wide is an autobiographical retelling of his experience as a 22-year old, when having been rejected from the Peace Corps, he took a teaching job at an all-black school on Daufuskie Island (South Carolina).
This book offers a window into the late 60s, when white kids in the South ghoulishly celebrated the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and harangued the black kids at their newly integrated institutions. When white ministers threatened to burn their own churches if a black person dared to attend their services. When school administrators in charge of Daufuskie Island paid more attention to the all-white school, with its one student, and were content to let the black school wither and its black student body be shackled by illiteracy.
Reading this book in 2020, you can see the connective tissue, the cultural DNA passed down from that generation to people today who want a quiet return to those days. Not the night riders and the cross burnings, but an unspoken longing for the "racial purity" of their sororities and country clubs. A time when the N-word could be rigorously employed around the Sunday dinner table.
Pat describes the school administrators as: "Soldiers of the rear guard, captains of a doomed army retreating through the snow, and praying that the shadows of the quick, dark wolves waiting in the cold, would come no closer. They were old men and could not accept the new sun rising out of strange waters. The world was very different now."
I suspect that in his latter years, Pat knew the world would always need a good prodding in the right direction. So when he passed away and his wish was to be buried in a black cemetery (one of the few places where segregation still exists), he was reminding us all that there are still bridges yet to be crossed.
July 29, 2018
Pat Conroy is one of my favorite authors now. I loved “Beach Music” so very much. His writing style is just wonderful. This book is a memoir. Conroy spent a year teaching at an all-black school on an island off South Carolina.
This is the island
and here is the school.
He was faced with endless challenges. Since it was 1969, racism was a huge problem. Another challenge was the awful administration. Towards the end of the book, I realized that they made a movie based on this book. I now remember seeing it when I was about eleven (so long ago!) and it made a big impression on me.
Some of my favorite quotes:
“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. It was very instructive. I could probably have enlisted more action from a bleached jellyfish washed ashore in a seasonal storm.”
“No man or woman has the right to humiliate children, even in the sacrosanct name of education. No one has the right to beat children with leather straps, even under the sacred auspices of all school boards in the world.”
“White guilt, that nasty little creature who rested on my left shoulder, prevented me from challenging Mrs. Brown on this or any other point. At this time of my life a black man could probably have handed me a bucket of cow piss, commanded me to drink it in order that I might rid my soul of the stench of racism, and I would have only asked for a straw. Blacks who have gone through the civil rights struggle have met a hundred white boys and girls who would dive head first in a septic tank to prove their liberation from the sins of their fathers.”
“In the fantasy of the races conceived in my mind, all blacks were noble people who had struggled against a repressive social order for years and who were finally reaping the tangible rewards of this struggle. All whites, especially myself, were guilty of heinous, extraordinarily brutal crimes against humanity.”
This is the island
and here is the school.
He was faced with endless challenges. Since it was 1969, racism was a huge problem. Another challenge was the awful administration. Towards the end of the book, I realized that they made a movie based on this book. I now remember seeing it when I was about eleven (so long ago!) and it made a big impression on me.
Some of my favorite quotes:
“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. It was very instructive. I could probably have enlisted more action from a bleached jellyfish washed ashore in a seasonal storm.”
“No man or woman has the right to humiliate children, even in the sacrosanct name of education. No one has the right to beat children with leather straps, even under the sacred auspices of all school boards in the world.”
“White guilt, that nasty little creature who rested on my left shoulder, prevented me from challenging Mrs. Brown on this or any other point. At this time of my life a black man could probably have handed me a bucket of cow piss, commanded me to drink it in order that I might rid my soul of the stench of racism, and I would have only asked for a straw. Blacks who have gone through the civil rights struggle have met a hundred white boys and girls who would dive head first in a septic tank to prove their liberation from the sins of their fathers.”
“In the fantasy of the races conceived in my mind, all blacks were noble people who had struggled against a repressive social order for years and who were finally reaping the tangible rewards of this struggle. All whites, especially myself, were guilty of heinous, extraordinarily brutal crimes against humanity.”
December 27, 2018
Published in the early 70’s, this is the phenomenal memoir of Pat Conroy as a teacher in 1969, on Defuskie Island, SC. His students were all black and mostly illiterate due to an “out of sight, out of mind” and racist mindset perpetuated by the school board on the mainland. Without going into all Pat did for those students, he was fired trying to bring joyous teaching and exposure to the world beyond their island. However he did not have the political skills to better the system. Because this story still has relevance today, it should be a mandatory read by all educators and administrators alike.
If I could rate all of Pat Conroy's books at once it would save me a lot of time. They're all 5 star. There is always an undercurrent of his own depression focused on his characters, I think coming from his own life and family. All incredible one of a kind stories worth reading more than once; not because they're hard to understand, it's because they are soooo good.
If I could rate all of Pat Conroy's books at once it would save me a lot of time. They're all 5 star. There is always an undercurrent of his own depression focused on his characters, I think coming from his own life and family. All incredible one of a kind stories worth reading more than once; not because they're hard to understand, it's because they are soooo good.
February 22, 2017
I realize this book has an underlying focus on racism in the South in the late '60s, but the other plot line I what resonated with me-a gifted teacher unfairly losing his job. I lost mine 10 years ago, gosh as long ago now as I taught. It was quite difficult for me to read how inspired Conroy was in the classroom, how much he cared about his students and their minds and futures only to be told he's insubordinate and no longer wanted. "To fire me so insensitively is one thing, but they try to destroy my personal reputation". YES I know this feeling. Conroy and I are both not ass kissers, which in the education system that runs on a political hierarchy , is a much craved expectation. All teachers have worked with a Mrs. Brown, a Piedmont, an Edna. We all have our opinions about these people.
To me the discrimination was against poverty. Sadly in this country more African Americans are found in the lower economic groups. These children had no chance. And no one cared.
To me the discrimination was against poverty. Sadly in this country more African Americans are found in the lower economic groups. These children had no chance. And no one cared.
June 6, 2008
This was the first Pat Conroy book I read, and several years later, I had an opportunity to spend some time on Yamacraw, the island where he taught school. It was a magical place, with sandy roads shaded by great oak trees dripping with spanish moss. The people lived in backwards conditions, but they were tied to the land and their relationship with the land and the ocean in a way that few if any of the rest of us will ever experience. This is an inspiring, uplifting book and I am a better person for having read it,
March 2, 2017
In 1969, Pat Conroy, a young idealistic teacher, accepted a position at a two room school house on an impoverished and isolated island off the coast of South Carolina. He is assigned the class of 5th-8th graders. The largely segregated school district of which this island was a part, had presumed that these Black children were inherently incapable of learning and treated them accordingly. He found a group of 18 students who could not recite the alphabet, let alone read, could not count to 10, let alone multiply, did not know the name of their country, let alone understand its history. This is his memoir of that year trying to engage, empower and expose these children to the wider world. Conroy obviously cares deeply for these children and is proud of his efforts, so this is an upbeat, funny and heart-warming book despite the frustrations of battling a discriminatory system.
November 18, 2018
Here’s an author I had overlooked, regrettably, as my prejudice had relegated him to a grade B author – too popular to really be any good (or so I thought). I had even been to his beloved Charleston a couple of years ago, and was told that he was “the guy” to read before going, but I ignored that. Most of all, he was in my favorite local bookstore 5 years ago, Left Bank books in Saint Louis, and I did not show. Then last year someone at work gave me this book as a gift, and I have finally read it.
It is delightful, a young man’s autobiography penned shortly after the event: His first publication, in 1972, a couple of years after the fact. This was a time that I remember well, being 10-12 years old, but his story is in the south where Jim Crow was just beginning to erode, and school de-segregation was in its infancy. My family vacations most frequently in the near geography of where this took place, Daufuskie Island and Beaufort, SC, near Hilton Head Island. When I go back, I’ll visit these areas more closely, and see how well my mind’s eye has drawn this.
Conroy’s account is highly entertaining in the people he encounters as well as his own transparently ego-fueled ebullience. He rails against the old south, yet acknowledges his own home-grown racism before he learned to despise it in himself, as well as that more sinister strand that continues to this day. Yet he loves these people, all of them, he can’t help himself. He took on teaching at a 2 room schoolhouse of all black students on an island reachable only by boat, and was shocked at way these people lived, almost like a tribe completely set aside from civilization. His descriptions of their language is almost insulting, but in 1972 he likely considered himself the most enlightened of any of his own kind.
By his own admission, Conroy is idealistic and impetuous, but it is clear that he was passionate about teaching these neglected kids. I have no doubt that the students loved him, and his most unorthodox teaching style. I remember the teachers with personality and opinions from my own youth, and those the most fondly. Conroy is ambitious as a teacher, experimental in method, and largely ignores the stale textbooks that are assigned. He takes the kids off the island for field trips, leading to all sorts of misadventure. But a persistent issue pervades Conroy’s year of teaching, the constant conflict with authority. He must have been almost unmanageable as an employee, constantly complaining and stirring up trouble. He went before the school board to plead his case, alienating his chain of command, and paid for it later. Ultimately he gets fired at the beginning of his second year, creating all sorts of chaos not only for himself but for his students and the islanders. But I have no doubt that these people appreciated this white man who came over for a year, opened there eyes, and likely made impact on those student lives for years to come. This was written in 1970-1972, when Conroy’s generation was railing against tradition and authority – I remember my own instructors at about that time. So this was in the air. Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow south, where the author was born, bred and had outgrown, makes for an enlightening read.
To finish, here’s one of the final contests of wills where Pat and the superintendent square off (p. 258): “The next day I entered Piedmont’s office on the run. We shook hands like two gunfighters about to draw back thirty paces at high noon. I wanted him to explain the phone call from the axman, what had prompted it, and why he had not called me himself. He stared at me with malevolent, falcon-yellow eyes burning behind his brown half-glasses. He made no effort to be civil, or his normal unctuous, ingratiating self. For some reason he had assumed the role of the terrible god-head of authority wronged or authority challenged. He crouched in his seat, bent and misshapen, starting at me with a contempt born over a long and trying year. His stare was calculated to wither me and Piedmont had risen to minuscule greatness by his uncanny ability to melt underlings or other prey with his rapacious glance. I sat in a chair across from him staring back. And in that single moment I realized something very important. Piedmont could not scare me. Nor could Bennington. Nor could the assemble board of education in all its measly glory. For in crossing the river twice daily I had come closer to more basic things. I had come to know the singular power of a river advancing toward the open sea and the power of tides regulating that advance. I had seen how fog could change the whole world into its own image. The river, the tides, and the fog were part of a great flow and a fitting together of harmonious parts.”
In summary, this was an original, fresh, very personal story told honestly by a young man with a real knack for writing. I am convinced of his talent, and know I will read his novels, despite the garish cover art that turned me off initially.
It is delightful, a young man’s autobiography penned shortly after the event: His first publication, in 1972, a couple of years after the fact. This was a time that I remember well, being 10-12 years old, but his story is in the south where Jim Crow was just beginning to erode, and school de-segregation was in its infancy. My family vacations most frequently in the near geography of where this took place, Daufuskie Island and Beaufort, SC, near Hilton Head Island. When I go back, I’ll visit these areas more closely, and see how well my mind’s eye has drawn this.
Conroy’s account is highly entertaining in the people he encounters as well as his own transparently ego-fueled ebullience. He rails against the old south, yet acknowledges his own home-grown racism before he learned to despise it in himself, as well as that more sinister strand that continues to this day. Yet he loves these people, all of them, he can’t help himself. He took on teaching at a 2 room schoolhouse of all black students on an island reachable only by boat, and was shocked at way these people lived, almost like a tribe completely set aside from civilization. His descriptions of their language is almost insulting, but in 1972 he likely considered himself the most enlightened of any of his own kind.
By his own admission, Conroy is idealistic and impetuous, but it is clear that he was passionate about teaching these neglected kids. I have no doubt that the students loved him, and his most unorthodox teaching style. I remember the teachers with personality and opinions from my own youth, and those the most fondly. Conroy is ambitious as a teacher, experimental in method, and largely ignores the stale textbooks that are assigned. He takes the kids off the island for field trips, leading to all sorts of misadventure. But a persistent issue pervades Conroy’s year of teaching, the constant conflict with authority. He must have been almost unmanageable as an employee, constantly complaining and stirring up trouble. He went before the school board to plead his case, alienating his chain of command, and paid for it later. Ultimately he gets fired at the beginning of his second year, creating all sorts of chaos not only for himself but for his students and the islanders. But I have no doubt that these people appreciated this white man who came over for a year, opened there eyes, and likely made impact on those student lives for years to come. This was written in 1970-1972, when Conroy’s generation was railing against tradition and authority – I remember my own instructors at about that time. So this was in the air. Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow south, where the author was born, bred and had outgrown, makes for an enlightening read.
To finish, here’s one of the final contests of wills where Pat and the superintendent square off (p. 258): “The next day I entered Piedmont’s office on the run. We shook hands like two gunfighters about to draw back thirty paces at high noon. I wanted him to explain the phone call from the axman, what had prompted it, and why he had not called me himself. He stared at me with malevolent, falcon-yellow eyes burning behind his brown half-glasses. He made no effort to be civil, or his normal unctuous, ingratiating self. For some reason he had assumed the role of the terrible god-head of authority wronged or authority challenged. He crouched in his seat, bent and misshapen, starting at me with a contempt born over a long and trying year. His stare was calculated to wither me and Piedmont had risen to minuscule greatness by his uncanny ability to melt underlings or other prey with his rapacious glance. I sat in a chair across from him staring back. And in that single moment I realized something very important. Piedmont could not scare me. Nor could Bennington. Nor could the assemble board of education in all its measly glory. For in crossing the river twice daily I had come closer to more basic things. I had come to know the singular power of a river advancing toward the open sea and the power of tides regulating that advance. I had seen how fog could change the whole world into its own image. The river, the tides, and the fog were part of a great flow and a fitting together of harmonious parts.”
In summary, this was an original, fresh, very personal story told honestly by a young man with a real knack for writing. I am convinced of his talent, and know I will read his novels, despite the garish cover art that turned me off initially.
June 16, 2024
The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy is a memoir that chronicles the author’s year teaching on Yamacraw Island, an isolated, impoverished Gullah community. With humor and compassion, Conroy exposes the realities of educational neglect and racial prejudice. He also celebrates the resilience and spirit of his students. He writes of the frustrations and triumphs of bridging cultural divides, making it a remembrance of education and human connection.
Overall, I enjoyed this lyrical memoir. Lyrical storytelling is what sets Conroy apart from other authors. However, I found the constant use of the N-word difficult to stomach. I understand it reflects the times—1969—but its frequent use, especially by “good Christian people,” feels hypocritical and disgusting. Additionally, it felt too long and it lost my attention by the end.
Overall, I enjoyed this lyrical memoir. Lyrical storytelling is what sets Conroy apart from other authors. However, I found the constant use of the N-word difficult to stomach. I understand it reflects the times—1969—but its frequent use, especially by “good Christian people,” feels hypocritical and disgusting. Additionally, it felt too long and it lost my attention by the end.
July 15, 2016
Pat Conroy's memoir of his year teaching 1969-70. It's kids of Gullah dialect S.C. island living who don't have cultural context to the English and other subjects, like American History and reading skills- that he is trying to teach them. He tries to use active trips, other activities which give experience and relate to their family and island life- instead of the usual physical consequence and heavily redundant reciting lessons of former and approved school structure. So he argues with the boss.
Originally I read this years ago and it was a quick reread. And I was surprised on how dated I found it now compared to then. And rather more condescending than previously came across in the former read from many years ago. Conroy was very young and with the Citadel not far behind him. but he learns as much as his kids do during this teaching sojourn. Possibly more.
Not being Southern or of such rigid knowledge base and language forms for optimal English as existed at this time and during the year recorded here, I must say something. When I read this before I tended to feel he had become "enlightened" in the sense of his value system and perceptions. And he does to some extent. But in a larger, much larger picture, I now, in age, compare it to a classroom in which the class does NOT have a common language, be it Gullah or dialect, or standard anything. And hold languages that come from at least 3 continents. One in which there are 5 or 6 countries of origin and different age levels by 3 or 4 years represented and maybe half not having heard English because they do not even have a TV. Well, some of us had TV but weren't allowed to watch much more than the Variety Hour or Gunsmoke. Mainly because of not passing grades of their required and mandatory testing, many are not even in their age appropriate grade level. And one in which their foods for lunch brought from home (no food at school ever), are nearly unrecognizable to each other. One in which students were seated at heat registers for desks because there were not enough desks to go around. And where 5 foot 4 inch boys were put into chairs designed for 3rd graders.
And still those nuns taught us well. We learned. And I cannot remember ever going on a field trip until seventh grade. We also had 60 to 62 per nun in each small classroom. More than twice what is considered class room size in the "worst" schools today. And most of these Dominican sisters taught for 40 years in the same place until all of their students were Baptist and not a one was Catholic.
I just had to give a shout out for them. That was a task. And all of their students were main-streamed even then, too. If there were severe disability, we had to take turns "teaching" each other. Because there was too many of us and we did not have cars or buses available, few could even reach any kind of Public school "inclusion". Few of our parents owned a car. Most walked as I did, and we were not allowed to ride bikes, because there was no place to safely put them. More than 2 miles each way as I did, be it blizzard or NO air conditioning on a 98 degree September day.
This book made me realize how much more difficult it must have been for those women with all those heavy clothes on too. Especially in the heat. But did they do a good job! I wish one of them would have written a memoir.
Originally I read this years ago and it was a quick reread. And I was surprised on how dated I found it now compared to then. And rather more condescending than previously came across in the former read from many years ago. Conroy was very young and with the Citadel not far behind him. but he learns as much as his kids do during this teaching sojourn. Possibly more.
Not being Southern or of such rigid knowledge base and language forms for optimal English as existed at this time and during the year recorded here, I must say something. When I read this before I tended to feel he had become "enlightened" in the sense of his value system and perceptions. And he does to some extent. But in a larger, much larger picture, I now, in age, compare it to a classroom in which the class does NOT have a common language, be it Gullah or dialect, or standard anything. And hold languages that come from at least 3 continents. One in which there are 5 or 6 countries of origin and different age levels by 3 or 4 years represented and maybe half not having heard English because they do not even have a TV. Well, some of us had TV but weren't allowed to watch much more than the Variety Hour or Gunsmoke. Mainly because of not passing grades of their required and mandatory testing, many are not even in their age appropriate grade level. And one in which their foods for lunch brought from home (no food at school ever), are nearly unrecognizable to each other. One in which students were seated at heat registers for desks because there were not enough desks to go around. And where 5 foot 4 inch boys were put into chairs designed for 3rd graders.
And still those nuns taught us well. We learned. And I cannot remember ever going on a field trip until seventh grade. We also had 60 to 62 per nun in each small classroom. More than twice what is considered class room size in the "worst" schools today. And most of these Dominican sisters taught for 40 years in the same place until all of their students were Baptist and not a one was Catholic.
I just had to give a shout out for them. That was a task. And all of their students were main-streamed even then, too. If there were severe disability, we had to take turns "teaching" each other. Because there was too many of us and we did not have cars or buses available, few could even reach any kind of Public school "inclusion". Few of our parents owned a car. Most walked as I did, and we were not allowed to ride bikes, because there was no place to safely put them. More than 2 miles each way as I did, be it blizzard or NO air conditioning on a 98 degree September day.
This book made me realize how much more difficult it must have been for those women with all those heavy clothes on too. Especially in the heat. But did they do a good job! I wish one of them would have written a memoir.
October 28, 2024
I loved this real life account of Pat Conroy’s. He’s a magician with words and his stories always move me.
January 28, 2008
I was really impressed with this book. Not only did I enjoy the story, which is true, but I also enjoyed the writing of Pat Conroy. This is the first book I have read by Conroy. This is about the experience Conroy had in the early 70’s teaching in a one room school house on Yamacraw Island (which is the pseudonym for Daufuskie Island), an island off the coast of South Carolina. This island was populated by mostly African Americans. The experience was truly eye opening . It really depicted the society of that time: Civil Rights, Segregation and Southern Culture and it’s resistance to change. Conroy took a true life experience and put in down on paper in such a way that the reader felt like they were there on the island with him. Add to that an exceptional sense of humor that was drizzled throughout the story and you have yourself a masterpiece. I have added all of the rest of Conroy’s books on my wishlist and I feel a little bit more with the program after finally reading one of his works.
June 24, 2017
This book was suggested to me by a friend who was a teacher, and how glad I am that I read it. It takes place in the 1960s on a Gullah Island off South Carolina and is actually an autobiography of Conroy's year plus on the island teaching black kids. The first few chapters deal with his teaching the children, which I found interesting, but just as I was beginning to lose a little interest he changed and began talking about the people he met on the island--good character studies. And then he switched to his taking the children on field trips and then his leaving the island. I didn't want this book to end, and all I can say is that my own review on this book does not do it justice. Such a beautiful writer that draws you in more and more and leaves you wanting more.
March 8, 2020
A memoir about a white teacher teaching illiterate African-American kids on a wee island off the coast of South Carolina, doubtlessly a progressive story in its day (published 1972). But it hasn’t aged well. I gave up 40% of the way in, partly from the cringeworthy paternalism, partly because the racism of most of the white folks was rendered much more vividly on the page than any of the actual students were, but mostly because this all ended up being so incredibly boring.
August 31, 2015
This was another outstanding book by Pat Conroy,he is a amazing storyteller. This book really makes you think about how society and how racism plays a big part in it. The characters were believable and you often felt sympathy for some of the characters. What separates Pat from most authors is the fact that lives what he writes, he is not just telling the story but he actually lived through it.
April 8, 2021
To not give this book 5-stars and add it to my 'favorites' list would be denying my 60 year quest of finding and reading great literature . The author's range of vocabulary had me checking on word definitions in every chapter . His descriptive powers of bringing you to the scenery , culture and society of Charleston , South Carolina were spot on , and made me wish I had spent more time in that city when I traveled in the Southeast .
I had a good friend that was a fellow lover of great books that died in an accident over four years ago , and I couldn't help thinking about how much he would have appreciated this read . It certainly helped that the main character was a freshman at a military institute in 1966 , the same year I started my college years . It was a coming-of-age remembrance in many respects for me , but I would suggest this book to any avid reader . Some might consider it a piece of fiction for men , but I believe anyone with an appreciation for fine writing would savor it .
I had a good friend that was a fellow lover of great books that died in an accident over four years ago , and I couldn't help thinking about how much he would have appreciated this read . It certainly helped that the main character was a freshman at a military institute in 1966 , the same year I started my college years . It was a coming-of-age remembrance in many respects for me , but I would suggest this book to any avid reader . Some might consider it a piece of fiction for men , but I believe anyone with an appreciation for fine writing would savor it .
January 4, 2009
I had gotten a copy of this book a while back for a few reasons:
1. It takes place in SC
2. Pat Conroy is a SC writer
3. I like some of his stuff, despite his lunatic family
4. I had fond memories of the movie
5. One of my favorite folk songs is "The Water is Wide".
6. A friend of mine is mentioned in the afterword.
I saw the movie made from this book when I was a teenager, a few years before my family moved to South CArolina. It made a big impression on me, so it was with some trepidation that I actually picked up the book to read.
At first I was uncomfortable. There's a lot of bigotry and racial stuff in the opening that made me cringe. I hated that this was what people would think of South Carolina. I also hated how there seemed to be no middle ground for the adult characters- either they were horrible racists, or holier than thou liberals. But then, I started realizing how far the social structure of this state has come since the book was written. It's changed a great deal in the years since I first moved here, (one would hope!!), and was already moving away from some of the worse stuff portrayed in the book by the time I arrived here in 1971. Unfortunately, there still exist great pockets of ignorance and poverty though.
The real hero, to me, is the SC wetlands- the marshes and river and the estuaries that I so love in the lowcountry. There is great beauty here. That is why I am including this book in a m-nag with a special mission.
1. It takes place in SC
2. Pat Conroy is a SC writer
3. I like some of his stuff, despite his lunatic family
4. I had fond memories of the movie
5. One of my favorite folk songs is "The Water is Wide".
6. A friend of mine is mentioned in the afterword.
I saw the movie made from this book when I was a teenager, a few years before my family moved to South CArolina. It made a big impression on me, so it was with some trepidation that I actually picked up the book to read.
At first I was uncomfortable. There's a lot of bigotry and racial stuff in the opening that made me cringe. I hated that this was what people would think of South Carolina. I also hated how there seemed to be no middle ground for the adult characters- either they were horrible racists, or holier than thou liberals. But then, I started realizing how far the social structure of this state has come since the book was written. It's changed a great deal in the years since I first moved here, (one would hope!!), and was already moving away from some of the worse stuff portrayed in the book by the time I arrived here in 1971. Unfortunately, there still exist great pockets of ignorance and poverty though.
The real hero, to me, is the SC wetlands- the marshes and river and the estuaries that I so love in the lowcountry. There is great beauty here. That is why I am including this book in a m-nag with a special mission.
November 21, 2017
When Pat Conroy was a new teacher, he set out for a small island off the coast of South Carolina in 1969/70 to teach poor kids at a black school there. What a culture shock! Not only did these kids mostly not know how to read or write, but they had never experienced Halloween! Pat did a lot for these kids over the year, and taught them in unorthodox ways.
I thought this was a memoir, but it was only at the very end of the book that it said it was “based on” his year on the island. I think it also said “fiction” somewhere, but I may be mixing that up with a review I read. I did disagree with one thing he did/argued for, but overall, I was enjoyed this book. It just might have been nice to know ahead of time that it may not have been a completely true account, though.
I thought this was a memoir, but it was only at the very end of the book that it said it was “based on” his year on the island. I think it also said “fiction” somewhere, but I may be mixing that up with a review I read. I did disagree with one thing he did/argued for, but overall, I was enjoyed this book. It just might have been nice to know ahead of time that it may not have been a completely true account, though.
December 27, 2009
Conroy, a successful novelist, spent a year teaching on an isolated island off the coast of South Carolina. The year was the 1969-70 school year and the island populated by highly disadvantaged sea islanders, mostly African-American with a handful of custodial whites who run the island and its limited services. Conroy, in his young twenties, a relatively recent graduate from The Citadel, had taught high school on the mainland for a couple of years. He is shocked by the impact of the historical malign neglect represented by the two room school house on Yamacraw—of course segregated until a few years before by policy and during Conroy’s moment by the demographics of the island. It is an engaging, if self-centered tale, written in the immediate wake of Conroy’s termination after a year and a month or so on the job, where he stirs things up by trying to broaden the horizons of his 18 students. He takes them on field trips to Trick or Treat in Beaufort, South Carolina, to Washington, D.C. to visit the nation’s capital with all its monuments, museums, and most impressively, its zoo. He fights with the other teacher, also the principal, and the county educational leaders, all of whom see satisfied with a traditional approach to instruction, one heavy on textbook drills and corporal punishment that nonetheless leaves several of Conroy’s older students unable to read or even recite the alphabet.
Conroy himself admits a journey from casual but eager racist as a teen to bleeding heart liberal by the time of his teaching career. Why it’s not explored or why the children and their families don’t provide inspiration for a more examined understanding of their situation isn’t clear. The book is too much Conroy in the moment, mitigated but not redeemed by self-deprecating admissions of his too passionate, too insufferable assuredness. The prose is mostly pedestrian colloquial (he uses “crap” way too much), but quick moving and sometimes beautiful. On the Washington road trip, one of his students asks about the lines on the road, something Conroy, like all of us perhaps, takes for granted. “To Jasper, who was accustomed to unpaved roads, they represented something strange, unexplained, and beyond his framework of experience. For the rest of the trip Barbara and I decoded road signs, billboards, and numbers painted on bridges and overpasses. Things I had not noticed for ten years now assumed great significance. I regretted that I could not be making this trip with the freshness of insight and beautiful innocence of Jasper and the others. I regretted that I was old, that I could no longer appreciate the education afforded by an American highway, and that I could not grasp the mystery of a single line painted down a road going north.” I regretted that there weren’t more passages like that and that Conroy passed on an opportunity to truly bear witness to a unique time, place, and culture. The real Yamacraw Island is Daufuskie Island, an island between the city of Savannah, Georgia, and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, that like its neighbor has since become a resort island. Conroy’s goal was to do whatever he could to help his students see a way off the island but larger forces conspired more effectively to achieve that goal. The Water Is Wide is an entertaining relic of a former time that might have been much more.
Conroy himself admits a journey from casual but eager racist as a teen to bleeding heart liberal by the time of his teaching career. Why it’s not explored or why the children and their families don’t provide inspiration for a more examined understanding of their situation isn’t clear. The book is too much Conroy in the moment, mitigated but not redeemed by self-deprecating admissions of his too passionate, too insufferable assuredness. The prose is mostly pedestrian colloquial (he uses “crap” way too much), but quick moving and sometimes beautiful. On the Washington road trip, one of his students asks about the lines on the road, something Conroy, like all of us perhaps, takes for granted. “To Jasper, who was accustomed to unpaved roads, they represented something strange, unexplained, and beyond his framework of experience. For the rest of the trip Barbara and I decoded road signs, billboards, and numbers painted on bridges and overpasses. Things I had not noticed for ten years now assumed great significance. I regretted that I could not be making this trip with the freshness of insight and beautiful innocence of Jasper and the others. I regretted that I was old, that I could no longer appreciate the education afforded by an American highway, and that I could not grasp the mystery of a single line painted down a road going north.” I regretted that there weren’t more passages like that and that Conroy passed on an opportunity to truly bear witness to a unique time, place, and culture. The real Yamacraw Island is Daufuskie Island, an island between the city of Savannah, Georgia, and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, that like its neighbor has since become a resort island. Conroy’s goal was to do whatever he could to help his students see a way off the island but larger forces conspired more effectively to achieve that goal. The Water Is Wide is an entertaining relic of a former time that might have been much more.
August 25, 2009
What can I say? I LOVE Pat Conroy's writing! In My Losing Season the way he describes a basketball game is pure poetry. While I was hanging about the local bookseller (as opposed to a book store) waiting for Conroy to write another book, I realized I had never read The Water is Wide. I don't know how I missed a Conroy book. I bought a copy and devoured it as soon as I got home! After having read all his other books and knowing his family history, it was an interesting read. He wrote this book before he decided to tell the world about his family. Unfortunately, the problems he describes in the school on an island in South Carolina where he taught for a year, occur in far too many schools. The administration doesn't want to be bothered with students in poor areas of many school districts and keeps them down instead of giving them a hand up. Parts of the book are absolutely hilarious!
When I read most of Conroy's books, I was a Yankee who never wanted to live in the South. Conroy made the South seem surreal. Now I have lived in Memphis for three years. Memphis is not the deep South, but living here has given me a different understanding of the South and I had a deeper appreciation for what Conroy was describing. I can't wait to read South of Broad! I don't care if the critics pan his books. I hope he never stops writing!
What amazed me was that after I finished reading this book, I went to put it on the shelf with my other Conroy books and realized that I already owned a copy! I can't believe I bought a copy and hadn't read it!
When I read most of Conroy's books, I was a Yankee who never wanted to live in the South. Conroy made the South seem surreal. Now I have lived in Memphis for three years. Memphis is not the deep South, but living here has given me a different understanding of the South and I had a deeper appreciation for what Conroy was describing. I can't wait to read South of Broad! I don't care if the critics pan his books. I hope he never stops writing!
What amazed me was that after I finished reading this book, I went to put it on the shelf with my other Conroy books and realized that I already owned a copy! I can't believe I bought a copy and hadn't read it!
July 3, 2015
I love Pat Conroy's way with words. He has such a keen sense of description. He doesn't use a lot of words, yet manages to be very precise in his details. This detail makes his characters vivid and memorable.
There are crappy teachers who care more for their job than the students, and then there are the ones who roll up their sleeves and reach with both hands in order to make a difference. Teachers need to be teachable. Some of the problems with public schools that were addressed in this book, are still problems that afflict many public schools today. The status quo should never be the norm when there are students failing.
The writing was amazing. The characters were memorable. The topic was worthy of exploration. And bottom line, I would read this again. So 5 stars.
There are crappy teachers who care more for their job than the students, and then there are the ones who roll up their sleeves and reach with both hands in order to make a difference. Teachers need to be teachable. Some of the problems with public schools that were addressed in this book, are still problems that afflict many public schools today. The status quo should never be the norm when there are students failing.
The writing was amazing. The characters were memorable. The topic was worthy of exploration. And bottom line, I would read this again. So 5 stars.
March 17, 2022
The author was twenty-six when he taught for one year the Gullah children of Daufuskie Island, the name changed to Yamacraw Island for the book. When he arrived on the island, accessible only by boat, he was shocked of the ignorance of the children and how the educational system had abandoned them. He wrote this memoir the year after he was fired for unconventional teaching methods as well as confronting the school administration embarassing them in the process. Reflecting on this year, he realized that he could be "self-righteous, so inflexible when I thought that I was right or that the children had been wronged. I lacked diplomacy and would not compromise."
One of my favorite stories within the book was the Halloween experience he offered some of the children. . Conroy's depiction of the incident was hilarious.
Although only his second novel, his skill as a Southern writer is evident in its prose with words like "But just as time heals the marsh grasses that wither and perish in the winter cold, so does it quell the storms that often threaten the human soul." The man can write! If you are an educator, I would recommend this book which has been an inspiration for aspiring teachers.
One of my favorite stories within the book was the Halloween experience he offered some of the children. . Conroy's depiction of the incident was hilarious.
Although only his second novel, his skill as a Southern writer is evident in its prose with words like "But just as time heals the marsh grasses that wither and perish in the winter cold, so does it quell the storms that often threaten the human soul." The man can write! If you are an educator, I would recommend this book which has been an inspiration for aspiring teachers.
June 6, 2022
4.5 🌟 This was such a good story. I think what made it so captivating was because how personal it was. It wasn’t a storyline someone made up, it was a life that was lived by this man. The lives he touched while teaching on Yamacraw Island was fascinating. He went against the grain and was able to change many lives because of it. This book made me think about the privileges we have. But also, not everyone in America has always had these privileges.
*Swear words throughout.
*Swear words throughout.
July 2, 2016
I knew that this was a memoir but I didn't realize it was a memoir about one specific year in the author's life; 1969. He offers to take a teaching position on Yamacraw Island only to realize that these children have been overlooked and basically treated like crap because they're black and poor. Conroy's idealism and belief that right and wrong are the only thing that matters leads to him becoming a passionate advocate of the island children, and earns him the enmity of people who just want to continue to ignore the islanders.
I have to admit that he seems to spend more time teaching the kids about life than he does trying to teach them to read. He's regularly harangued by the the woman who's been there for a long time because, she assures him, he needs to stick to the textbook and beat them if they don't behave. Which would be how they managed to get through four years under her tutelage and still be illiterate? Right, that's because they're stupid.
This story is both uplifting and heartbreaking because you have this man who is a believer and really wants to change things facing off with the people who want to keep the status quo. So Conroy is inspiring but it's heartbreaking to see him struggle.
Part of the reason that I was interested in this book was because I read The Prince of Tides last year. It was really cool to see how elements of his experiences here were woven into that story even though The Prince of Tides is fiction. Just a little bit here and there :)
I have to admit that he seems to spend more time teaching the kids about life than he does trying to teach them to read. He's regularly harangued by the the woman who's been there for a long time because, she assures him, he needs to stick to the textbook and beat them if they don't behave. Which would be how they managed to get through four years under her tutelage and still be illiterate? Right, that's because they're stupid.
This story is both uplifting and heartbreaking because you have this man who is a believer and really wants to change things facing off with the people who want to keep the status quo. So Conroy is inspiring but it's heartbreaking to see him struggle.
Part of the reason that I was interested in this book was because I read The Prince of Tides last year. It was really cool to see how elements of his experiences here were woven into that story even though The Prince of Tides is fiction. Just a little bit here and there :)
July 5, 2016
Moving and enlightening account of a year Conroy spent in the 60�s teaching disadvantaged black elementary school students in a two-room schoolhouse on a small coastal island off of Beaufort, SC. He is appalled at the poor level of education and limited aspirations of his students due to the isolation of the fishing community and cycle of poverty. It was exciting to experience the creative approaches Conroy uses to get through to the kids and efforts to get their parents and school administration to go along a series of field trips to expand the students� horizons. Credit is due to Conroy for covering his own history of racial stereotyping and admitting that his own ego contributed to his being fired for bucking the system too much. Compares well with Frank Decourt�s �Teacher Man�.
May 3, 2017
Reread.
July 17, 2025
4.5 stars. Beautifully written. Funny and honest while being heartbreaking at times, Pat tells an important story. I especially appreciated this one as someone who lives in the low country (Yamacraw is the fictional name Pat gives to the island, Daufuskie, that he spent a year teaching on).
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