Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2214355 in Books
• Published on: 1986-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 264 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Launching the American Places of the Heart series, Bresee writes eloquently about his early years (19201929) on James Island off Charleston, S.C. The author's father managed a dairy farm on the island where he brought his family from rural Pennsylvania to experience a very different life. The memoir dwells on rich boyhood adventures: crabbing in the river, exploring the woods, learning in a two-room school. Bresee impresses the reader with descriptions of the gracious customs observed by Southern gentry and, without passing judgments, he records his feelings on the plight of the area's desperately poor blacks, some of them former slaves. Most of the story, however, evokes great times in a lovely locale the Bresees were sad to leave when they returned North. Williams's delicate drawings expertly depict this "place of the heart."
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Bresee came to the Charleston, South Carolina sea islands in 1921 with his family at the age of six and returned to the Pennsylvania mountains to the family farm during the early years of the Depression. Sea Island Yankee is his recollection of his formative years on St. James Islandyears marked by personal growth and increasing awareness of his small world. Often humorous and even bittersweet, the book is a poignant reflection of Southern customs, family life, school, and race relations. Especially touching is Bresee's account of his return to St. James many years later and a meeting with a black friend of his youth. This is the first in a new series. Other planned titles will focus on Dallas; Dedham, Massachusetts; and Oxford, Georgia. A worthwhile addition for public and academic libraries. Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Lib., Alabama
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written
This book offers a delightful walk through the south of the 1930's. The culture is penetrated through a child's uncluttered horizon. Coupled with a mature sifting of events this book offers wonderful insight into the healing, fragile and unique culture of Charleston. Wonderfully written, this book offers a charming notch of history.

Beautiful.
I live on James Island, where Clyde Bresee's autobiographical story takes place. I expected it to be so-so, but have of late been determined to read anything that comes my way about James Island, so...well, what a real surprise. Deftly written, evoking a sense of place and time and people that is still part of the underlying fabric of the place and culture. Highly recommended.

A beautiful memoir of life on a South Carolina plantation
Clyde Bresee does a wonderful, colorful job in this memoir of coming of age on a plantation on South Carolina's James Island. The simplicity of life as a boy exploring nature mixed with complex feelings and observations of race unfold as dancing prose. As a regular visitor of nearby Folly Island, this books allows one to travel the sea island as if you are there.