Essay - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, A Florida Folklife Writer It Is Important...

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, A Florida Folklife Writer

It is important when pursuing the study of history, not to get caught in the habit of reciting his*****rical dates and facts. If this is the true ***** ***** *****, then it involves nothing more than memorization. For one to truly understand why the people of a certain time period behaved as they did, it is necessary to get into their personal daily lives. It is important to know the passions of ***** daily struggles. ***** is rare that we ***** such as glimpse into these other lives, so long ago. This is the type of valuable information ***** we get when reading the works of Marjorie Rawlings.

***** Kinnan Rawlings ***** ***** of the most famous Florida wr*****ers of all time. She loved ***** folklife in *****lachua County, Florida and h***** been compared to Henry David Thoreau ***** her style. ***** gives us a behind the scenes look at ***** Florida backcountry in the 1930s. The ***** of the area were *****n as "crackers." Her works give us a glance at a life seldom seen by those other than the inhabitants ***** ***** *****.

Marjorie Rawlings was born in Washington D.C. and Graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1918. She went to live in New York to pursue a career in journalism. In 1928 she left ***** York ***** live in Cross Creek, Florida. She divorced her first h*****b***** in 1933 and married Norton Baskin, a St. Augustine businessman in 1941. In 1939 she won a Pulitzer prize for ***** novel, ***** Yearling. [Univ. of Florida, 2001]

In 1930 Rawlings wrote Jacob's Ladder, in which a young Florida couple runs away ***** their lives and tries to find their way in a land filled with greed, bad luck, and dishonesty. In South Moon Under, *****, Marjorie introduces us to a Florida Cracker who becomes a moonshiner *****nd kills the cousin who betrays him. Golden Apples, 1935, is about an Englishm***** who finds himself in nineteenth-century Florida. ***** 1938, Rawlings wrote the Pulitzer prize winning *****, The Yearling.

This novel explores a boy's initi*****tion ***** manhood in the Florida Wilderness. In this s*****ry a boy is made to kill h***** pet deer w*****en it destroys ***** family's crops. When the Whippoorwill is a collection of short s*****ries published in 1940. Cross ***** was written in 1942 and has often been compared to Henry ***** Thoreau's Walden. This is an au*****biographical work, in ***** Marjorie tells about her adaptation to life ***** Cross Creek. She released a comp*****nion to th***** ***** c*****ed Cross Creek Cookery. In 1953, her last novel, The Sojourner was released, ***** only book ever ***** with a Northern setting. In 1955, R*****wling's only children's novel ***** released, called ***** Secret River. It tells the s*****ry of a young girl and her dog ***** journey to a secret Florida River to get fish for her father's fish market, which is experiencing hard times [Salling, 2001].

When ***** Rawlings first saw