John Warner's Reviews > The Water is Wide

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. (view spoiler)[When Conroy realized that the children never experienced Halloween, Conroy arranged for some of the children to be travel by boat to Buford and stay in his house. The girls being very superstitious were anxious staying in the Conroys house fearing ghosts. Before Conroy allayed their fears, he exacerbated them by relaying a story of a dwarf ghost who lived in the girl's bedroom and relished in sucking the blood of Yamacraw children. As Conroy described it, the girls screamed, ran about the like beheaded poultry, then huddled on the couch. (hide spoiler)]. 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.