This wise and deeply felt memoir of a black naturalist's improbable journey travels the hallways of academia, the fields and forests of ornithological study, and the dusty clay roads of the rural . Kilpatrick,E.S, T.A. "Birds made me feel good," says Lanham, who in 2016 authored the book The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love . He writes about becoming an ornithologist despite feeling as though this wasn't something black boys did, the struggles of birding in the rural South as a man of color, his search to find his genealogy and discover how his ancestors came to Edgefield, his choice to change his degree from engineering to zoology before his senior year of college, and other experiences and influences that directed his life. THE HOME PLACE: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature.By J. for(var i=0; i As a result, I've carved, collected, and commissioned facsimiles of these birds. "Application": "GoodreadsMonolith", I do genealogy and found out I had ancestors who owned slaves! var ue_sid = "580-8833118-6099055"; Lanham has created a book of monumental social, political, and philosophic importance. J. function q(c, r) { Drew Lanham is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Mans Love Affair with Nature. Drew Lanham shows himself to be an exuberantly lyrical thinker. Spartanburg, SC. //, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature, Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts. Rogers., ed. In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. It's a little like reading Faulkner or Proust - you just have to let the language roll on over you and try not to drown. 2015. Drew Lanham earned his B.A. This is apparently rare enough to warrant an investigation into why its rare (the blurb on the cover from Helen Macdonald promises A groundbreaking work about race and the American landscape). Others birders who share his skin color. } The birds, the trees, the cows, the bugs, his home place, his family - I feel like I've been to Edgefield, South Carolina. Columbia, SC. Inspired by birds while growing up on his family's 200-acre farm in rural Edgeeld County, South Carolina, Lanham has studied songbirds and conservation throughout an illustrious career at Clemson University, where he is Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology. $13.99. init: function() { I lay as still as I could and did my best imitation of something stinking and dead. Straka, T.J., J.D. Mostly he describes his family relationships and his relationships with nature. The descriptions & telling of his family members gave me a real picture of each of their beings. In his 2016 book, "The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature," Lanham traces his love of birds and nature back to his family's small farm in rural South Carolina. Thoughts about hunting, Black belonging and history/lineage (especially in America), and reclaiming place were all discussions I find prickly and I liked hearing his perspective on these topics. His highly acclaimed first book, The Home Place: Memoirs of a . (excerpted from the section, Flock, chapter titled, The Home Place, which is also the name of the book). This is a BOOK. by J. Poetry needs to be read out loud and he blessed us with this treasure. I am a wildling, born of forests and fields and more comfortable on unpaved back roads and winding woodland paths than in any place where concrete, asphalt, and crowds prevail.. J. // page settings A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. The story later would become the first chapter of "The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature," his first of four books. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be the rare bird, the oddityto find joy and freedom in the same land his ancestors were tied to by forced labor, and then to be a black man in a profoundly white field. If they are not, it's a brilliant satire. If books are supposed to let us walk in someone else's shoes, this is five stars all around. In addition to the MacArthur nod, Lanham is the Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina . Winner of the 2017 Southern Book Prize var isRetina = window.devicePixelRatio >= 2; // retina display I loved hearing Drew read his own poetic words on the Audiobook. 7 likes. Drew Lanham is a native of Edgefield, South Carolina, and an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University. Trust me, that is enough. Program Title: Coloring the Conservation Conversation. J. They will fill in places in your heart that may have faded from memory, but nonetheless bind us together in the common ground of family, freedom, coming of age, and love. This means considering how ethnicity and other factors impact how we see nature and then conserve natural resources. It's no surprise that many of our most celebrated lovers of the land . . Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolinaa place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else"has been home to generations of Lanhams. return false; Dog Hands in South Carolina Authors and Their Dogs. //=0){return}if("ue_https" in e){f=e.ue_https}else{f=e.location&&e.location.protocol=="https:"?1:0}i=f? about. Perhaps the most monumental book I've read or reviewed about race relations in America. It was simply divine and added much more to the words on the page. Its going to be tough to remove this book from my favorite read of the year. }); J. 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