Sea Island Yankee

By Clyde Bresee

Book Overview

An adventurous boyhood, a remarkable Southern community, and one jewel of a memoir

Clyde Bresee was just five years old in 1921 when his family moved from a tiny Pennsylvania farm to the Lawton Plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. While his father labored for the next decade to revitalize the sprawling sea island plantation's dairy operation, Clyde reveled in a world utterly foreign to the community of his birth. On James Island he encountered a society of mannered gentility, a climate where winter passed in the twinkling of an eye, a place of wandering tidal streams and vast expanses of salt marshes, and a people--African-American people--whom he had never met. In Sea Island Yankee, Bresee revisits the time and place that endowed his childhood with great happiness and that have held a powerful grip on his musings throughout adulthood.

With the observant eyes of youth and the distanced perspective on an outsider, Bresee re-creates his boyhood world of water, live oaks, and Spanish moss. He vividly describes the Confederated memorial observances at which he heard white-haired veterans recount Civil War battles, and he recalls seemingly endless opportunities for swimming, crabbing, boating, and exploring. Bresee also pays tribute to the African-Americans who shaped his sea island experience, from Jamsie, his multi-talented playmate, to Ned, the indispensable plantation employee who once saved the life of Clyde's brother.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570030952
• ISBN13: 9781570030956
• Release Date: November 1995
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully Written

This book reminds me of the simple qualities of my childhood, the small adventures and clear view of life are presented with the refreshing clarity of Dr. Bresee's writing

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.

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.

Reviews from leading periodicals

From the New York Times Book Review-- Mr. Bresee is a writer of distinction from whom we must hear more. His prose is transparent, supple and spare; he evokes unhurriedly the smells and textures of the Southern world of his boyhood; his account of the fading landed aristocracy his father worked among is both astringent and forgiving; he is honest in his own baffled hypocrisies over "color." Through the power of Mr. Bresee's writing we travel deep into the heart of a troubled culture and the "unexpected" ambiguous beauty of a childhood lived in it. Describing the James Island Creek he played in as boy, Mr Bresee writes: "The tide was far out and we stood still for a few moments trying to see everything at once. To have this shoreline for a playground was almost unbelievable. This living, warm thing before us and a stream of moving water! The sloping plane of mud, popping in the hot sun; the black surface skimming with fiddler crabs that vanished like raindrops when we approached." Those fiddler crabs vanished then -- but they are here, now, caught for us in the fragile but enduring net of langauge.--Andrew Harvey From The Library Journal-- "Often humorous and even bittersweet, the book is a poignant reflection of the Southern customs, family life, school and race relations." From the Cleveland Plain Dealer -- "Bresee's prose is cadanced and flowing...a moving look back at his formative years in an alien place."