The Water is Wide

Spoiler alert.

Every year I try to read one or more books about teaching.  That profession has always fascinated me and, at times, I’ve even pursued it.  But I didn’t read The Water is Wide just because it’s about teaching.  I’ve read some other books by the author, Pat Conroy, going back many years.  He is well known for having his novels made into films.  The more famous ones are The Great Santini starring Robert Duval and The Prince of Tides starring Nick Nolte and Barbara Streisand.  Most of Conroy’s novels are also based either partially or entirely on events in his own life.  When I was in college I read The Great Santini about a teenager growing up with an overbearing military father based on Conroy’s own father who, according to him, was even worse than the book.  Last year I read My Losing Season, a memoir about Conroy’s last college basketball season that he played at The Citadel in the mid 1960’s.  I like how he went to the details of the games such that I felt like I was there playing with them.  The dynamics between his teammates, the coaching staff, the other teams and fans were also interesting.  Overall, his writing can be very humorous and interesting, though he tends to focus on somewhat negative episodes in his life.

The Water is Wide is a memoir about Conroy’s experience teaching on Yamacraw Island that’s part of South Carolina and also near the coast of Georgia.  He taught a class of 18 children in the 4th through 6th grades, all African Americans from the poor families of the island.  He taught there during the school year that spanned 1969-1970, an interesting time for education in the Deep South.  He acknowledges how education in the South was much easier in the 1950’s when he attended a nice white school and African Americans played second fiddle in their separate schools.  But he also acknowledges that things were also very unfair, just kept under a rug.  By the late 60’s when he taught, the integration of schools had begun in earnest.  An entire culture was changing with sharp growing pains.  Even though he didn’t teach an integrated class on Yamacraw, these changes would be present.

Apart from the historical context, life on Yamacraw (actually called Daufuskie Island but fictionalized by Conroy as Yamacraw) is fascinating.  Initially, Conroy is flabbergasted by how little his students know.  They can’t name the president or the country in which they live.  Their education has been heavily underserved due to the lingering prejudices and the island’s isolation.  But Yamacraw has its own culture, even its own language in the Gullah dialect that Conroy and the reader come to appreciate.  The people of the island are very superstitious.  They believe in ghosts, spirits, and voodoo.  They’re also suspicious of strangers from outside.  Most of their life depends on the sea through fishing and crabbing.  They also hunt for food in the island’s forests.  Conroy describes how his students grow up in an accepted culture of violence and death.  Many people can’t swim so drowning is common.  Alcohol provides one of the few means of entertainment.  Most of the islanders fear crossing the river to the mainland, the river Conroy crosses to get to school weekly and eventually daily.  This crossing is the inspiration for the book’s title.

Yamacraw also has its characters: Ted Stone, the white rugged individualist who unofficially rules the island, and Ms. Brown, the other teacher at the school, an African American also from outside who follows the white system of educating and clashes with Conroy.  There are Conroy’s students whose individual and spirited personalities jump out as he recounts them and their parents who clash with and come to respect him.  The first meeting between Conroy and a grandmother who cares for three of his students in hilarious.  His students’ petty fights and their tendency to play sports by their own rules (or lack of rules) make for fun reading.  I almost forgot about their poor circumstances.  They have their own speech and expressions that are possibly cultural, regional, or other origin.  Conroy’s students call him “Conrack” and say things like “shoot him dead.”  There’s one student that Conroy can’t understand at all most of the time and has to rely on the other students to translate.  This student answers Conroy by saying “Yas’m” because no one had ever told him that the phrase “yes, ma’am” is only applied to women.  To the student, “yes, ma’am” is what he says to teachers.  Other characters from off the island include the helpful Zeke Skinberry and his kind but foul-mouth wife, the powerful white school administrator who hires and later clashes with Conroy, Conroy’s wife Barbara who he marries during the school year, and his friends, other teachers in South Carolina.

The book really showcases Conroy’s strengths as a teacher.  He tries to make learning interesting by including games such as identifying composers by their music and Play and Talk where each player must spell a word using the letter of the alphabet on which he lands.  Conroy also uses whatever technology is available to him: a tape recorder for recording student performances, films, a radio, records, and whatever else he can dig up.  He brings in guest speakers: musicians; his sister, a wannabe actress who the students believe is a witch after she performs a scene from MacBeth; and other teachers with their own ideas and methods.  Conroy organizes trips to the mainland for his students to further expand their horizons.  He’s willing to experiment: try one thing and if it doesn’t work, try another.  He also establishes a great rapport with his students.  Unlike many teachers of the time period, he refuses to use corporal punishment for discipline.  He jokes with his students and presides over an atmosphere that is semi-serious and semi-chaotic.  Though they are ignorant of much of the outside world, he doesn’t put them down for it.  He lets them share their stories about hunting on the island and the ghosts they’ve seen.  Conroy’s teaching style rarely sites well with the other teacher on the island and the administrators but he does what he feels is necessary.  His goal is to prepare his students for when they leave the island for high school and beyond.

Conroy seems like an excellent teacher but what really makes the story is his writing.  He doesn’t recount the story in exact chronological order but rather recounts different aspects of it in different chapters such as the use of technology, the trips to the mainland for Halloween, and his clashes with the other teacher and principal, Mrs. Brown.  This style suits the story better because many of these aspects overlap in time.  Initially it seems as if he’s digressing but after reading most of the book everything fits together.  When he describes something such as the people of the island he really gets into it making for fast and engaging reading.  As with his teaching, he incorporates humor into his writing not taking himself or most everyone else too seriously.  He describes how the islanders use the volunteers from California as free labor for building outhouses.  The volunteers sought to help those that were less fortunate.  To do so they “could come to the thickets and backwaters of the Carolinas and master the art of s***-house building.”  Conroy can be painfully honest and sarcastic at the same time such as when he writes, “It would be nice to report that the event (a civil rights sit-in demonstration) transformed me but it did not.  It did very little for me.” (p. 7.)  His writing gets very reflective.  He ruminates on whether it is worth trying to help his students, how their neglect by the schools is a crime.  From these thoughts he determines his education philosophy: “Life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation.” (p. 163.)  From his thoughts he also realizes that the power of the administration is nothing compared to the river he must cross to get to the island. (p. 267.)  The former could only end his teaching career but the latter determined life or death.  Hence, the book’s title.

Like Conroy’s other books, The Water is Wide was made into a film in the 1970’s.  It starred Jon Voight as Conroy and was titled Conrack.  Twenty five years later, Voight sponsored a reunion of the film’s cast and learned that many of the child actors became teachers.  I wonder what became of Conroy’s actual students.  They must be in their late 40’s or early 50’s by now.  I’m glad that Pat Conroy gave some insight into their lives and his teaching of them.  Yes, they were in unfortunate circumstances and living in an underserved community, but there was more to it than that.  Their lives also had so much joy, so much spirit and culture.  Conroy didn’t see it initially but learned to appreciate it.  The cultural and status gaps may be wide, but if the water can be crossed then so can they.