Rain on a Strange Roof: A Southern Literary Memoir

by Jan Whitt University of Colorado Boulder

Overview

A scholar of Southern literature and culture, Jan Whitt has written a personal narrative about adoption, childhood abuse, and fifty years of searching for her family in rural Appalachia. A testament to the power of love and the resilience of the human spirit, Rain on a Strange Roof unflinchingly explores death and loss at the same time that it celebrates the transformative power of love and literature. An award-winning professor, Whitt teaches courses in American and British literature, literary journalism, media, and women’s studies.

Quoting from films, novels, and short stories about the American South, Whitt weaves a narrative about the necessity for human connection and the desire for home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761858294
Publisher:	Hamilton Books
Publication date:	03/22/2012
Pages:	184
Sales rank:	843,024
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jan Whitt was born in poverty in Knoxville, Tennessee, and adopted five months later by fundamentalist Baptist missionaries who struggled with the demands of parenthood. Reliant upon books for escape, Whitt left home in her teens and earned a B.A. in English and journalism and an M.A. in English from Baylor University by working full time at a local newspaper. She received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver in 1985, and, today, she is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Table of Contents

Contents


Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Reading Life
The Ancient Mariner tells his tale.
“Life is not a novel.”
The center doesn’t hold.

Chapter 1: An Imagined Childhood
I’ve been putting it up my whole life.
“Did you hear the rain one night?”
Standing on the Radley porch is enough.
Frankie Addams and Mick Kelly are the “we of me.”
Life is a slide show, flashes of light and color.

Chapter 2: Southern Fictions
Mrs. McIntyre watched while the tractor rolled.
I turned to dust and stone.
Laughter reverberates in Dixie.
Some go to Lourdes, while others go to Rowan Oak.
I long for days and times I only imagine I know.
There are no memory chests in the attic.


Chapter 3: Memory and Knowing
“‘Star Wars’ must seem less strange to you.”
Byron Bunch and Addie Bundren are familiar to me.
Adoption is a socially sanctioned lie.
“Betty Ann Miracle” is written in her Bible.
I hope they’re together in the pretty green pasture.

Chapter 4: Children Not Our Own
Rachel Moore lives at the P.O.
So much depends upon red wheelbarrows.
Laura Flood and Matt Josey are my children, too.
There are other voices, other rooms.
“The truth is, it goes by fast, doesn’t it?”


Conclusion: Reconstructed (But Unregenerate)
Reading great books saved my life.
“And so they are ever returning to us, the dead.”

Appendix
Works Cited
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In a moving book of literary criticism woven together with personal memoir, Jan Whitt's genre-bending scholarship about the search for identity, the recovery of the past, and the primacy of place emphasizes universal themes of hope and courage that will resonate with us all. —Diane L. Borden, professor and director, School of Journalism & Media Studies, San Diego State University

One longs to be in Jan Whitt's classroom as she interprets To Kill a Mockingbird with her students. This story of her life—intertwined with the literature that saved her life—is the next best thing. —Barbara Elmore, former managing editor, The Waco Tribune-Herald

Whitt's singular memoir of a childhood lived on the edges of profound loss and despair is all the more compelling for the way she chooses to tell her story. Melding the shards of personal experience with the literary works that sustained her and the ordinary lives that fascinated her as a young journalist, Whitt creates an autobiographical tour de force. —Patricia A. Sullivan, professor, Department of English, University of Colorado at Boulder