The Power Of The Porch

In ways that are highly individual, says Harris, yet still within a shared oral tradition, Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan skillfully use storytelling techniques to define their audiences, reach out and draw them in, and fill them with anticipation. Considering how such dynamics come into play in Hurston's Mules and Men, Naylor's Mama Day, and Kenan's Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, Harris shows how the "power of the porch" resides in readers as well, who, in giving themselves over to a story, confer it on the writer. Against this background of give and take, anticipation and fulfillment, Harris considers Zora Neale Hurston's special challenges as a black woman writer in the thirties, and how her various roles as an anthropologist, folklorist, and novelist intermingle in her work. In Gloria Naylor's writing, Harris finds particularly satisfying themes and characters. A New York native, Naylor came to a knowledge of the South through her parents and during her stay on the Sea Islands she wrote Mama Day. A southerner by birth, Randall Kenan is particularly adept in getting his readers to accept aspects of African American culture that their rational minds might have wanted to reject. Although Kenan is set apart from Hurston and Naylor by his alliances with a new generation of writers intent upon broaching certain taboo subjects (in his case gay life in small southern towns), Kenan's Tims Creek is as rife with the otherworldly and the fantastic as Hurston's New Orleans and Naylor's Willow Springs.

"There is something spooky and resonant about liminal places like docks, shorelines, decks, and perhaps most commonly porches. Here, Charlie Hailey meditates on porches in a way that is appropriately thoughtful, affecting, rich, and resonant. Porches, in his hands, become portals onto an endless array of large metaphysical questions: what is it to be in a place? How does one place teach us about the world and about ourselves, both as individuals and as a species? What are we-and the things we have built-in this world? In a time when questions of what makes society society and what sustains the individual are so paramount, Hailey's meditations are both a tonic and a series of welcome provocations"--

“This quiet novel sings. A graceful profound story for all ages that speaks well beyond its intended audience.” —Kirkus (starred review) Fans of Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech's Ruby Holler will love this tween novel about opening your heart and finding family when you least expect it. When a young couple finds a boy asleep on their porch, their lives take a surprising turn. Unable to speak, the boy, Jacob, can't explain his history. All John and Marta know is that they have been chosen to care for him. And as their connection and friendship with Jacob grow, they embrace his exuberant spirit and talents. The three of them blossom into an unlikely family and begin to see the world in brand-new ways.

A piece of music is more than the sum and sequence of its notes. The spaces between the notes, the rests or silences, are just as essential. Without those spaces, the notes do not properly relate to each other and even the most profound composition degrades into mere noise. Front porches metaphorically represent those rest-spaces in our lives and they are vanishing. Without them we are denying ourselves access to our music and possibility – and the evidence is clear at all levels of interaction. The social and political discourse in this country has, of late, eroded into noise and acrimony, dialogue having been abandoned for weaponized partisan monologues. Diatribes and rhetoric are gleefully accelerated like charged particles online, and on competing TV news and talk radio shows. In fact, this dynamic is experienced in meetings of any scale where diverse perspectives clash around topics we care about. But ask yourself, what is being accomplished beyond gridlock, frayed relationships and destructive polarization. We need to meet in new ways. The Front Porch Revolution is about the need to reassert true conversation and dialogue and reaffirm an earnest commitment to genuine communication. If anything is to be accomplished (and there is much that needs to be accomplished) we must be able to hear ourselves think and be present with our personal stories that give context to that thinking. This is more likely to happen on front porches than on the floor of Congress, in board rooms, in classrooms or on Facebook or Twitter. Viewing the world from the front porch invites a new way of thinking about our communication challenges, leadership and what we have become in the absence of front porches. Based on decades of research and first-hand experience at the Center for Professional Excellence at the University of Texas at San Antonio, The Front Porch Revolution maps out a lucid thoughtful and hopeful path forward to possibility.

New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank is back home in the Carolina lowcountry, spinning a tale that brims with the warmth, charm, heart, and humor that has become her trademark. Porch Lights is a stirring, emotionally rich multigenerational story—a poignant tale of life, love, and transformation—as a nurse, returning to Sullivans Island from the Afghanistan War, finds her life has been irrevocably altered by tragedy…and now must rediscover love and purpose with the help of her son and aging mother. An evocative visit to enchanting Sullivans Island with its unique pluff mud beaches, palmetto trees, and colorful local lore—a novel filled with unforgettable characters, and enlivened by tales of the notorious Blackbeard and his bloodthirsty pirate crew and eerie Edgar Allan Poe stories—Porch Lights stands tall among the very best works of not only Dottie Frank, but Anne Rivers Siddons, Rebecca Wells, Pat Conroy, and other masters of the modern Southern novel as well.

For Peter Smith, the assignment from Minnesota Public Radio was simple: try to do something about Minnesota . So he began exploring the simple, everyday Minnesota things he came across and sharing them with listeners each Tuesday morning. The result is a hilarious, often wry, and always remarkable portrait of everyday life in the Land of 10,000 Lakes that will resonate with Minnesotans from the state's biggest cities to its smallest towns. A Porch Sofa Almanac is the first collection of Smith's essays for MPR-stories that keep close to the ground and reflect on the common experiences of being.

The former American History editor explores the creation and restoration of an essential part of a twentieth-century home’s identity—the American porch. “In this delightful look at an American icon, journalist and documentary scriptwriter . . . Dolan traces the history of the porch, using this history to explore subjects such as architecture, history, slavery, colonialism, trade, anthropology, sociology, consumer behavior, and publishing.” —Library Journal In 1981, Michael Dolan and his wife, Eileen O’Toole, bought a 1926 suburban bungalow in the Palisades area of Washington, DC. It was a fixer-upper and DIY project that consumed their lives for twelve years. As rooms were transformed with updated electrical wiring and plumbing, the house’s porch became a storage area, rotating appliances, furniture, and construction materials as they were used and discarded. After the interior renovation was completed, Michael finally turned his attention to the porch, working with contractors to resurrect it—a reconstruction that inspired him to uncover the history of porches and their significance as a symbolic piece of Americana. “In praise of the porch: Come up and sit a spell.” —USA Today “A wry, well-researched look at the place and the people who rocked, talked and courted on [the American porch] for three centuries.” —Parade “The porch is making a comeback, gradually replacing its humbler rival the deck, which the traditionalist Dolan refers to as the platform shoe or leisure suit of American architecture.” —Time “Dolan amply demonstrates that the porch is primarily a means of escaping the heat and, almost as important, a locus for casual social interaction.” —Publishers Weekly

You're in the American South now, a proud region with a distinctive history and culture. A place that echoes with names like Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee, Scarlett O'Hara and Uncle Remus, Martin Luther King and William Faulkner, Billy Graham, Mahalia Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley. Home of the country blues and country music, bluegrass and Dixieland jazz, gospel music and rock and roll. Where menus offer both down-home biscuits and gravy and uptown shrimp and grits. Where churches preach against "cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild women" (all Southern products) and where American football is a religion. For more than thirty years John Shelton Reed has been "minding" the South--watching over it, providing commentary upon it. He is the author or editor of thirteen books about the South, and despite his disclaimer regarding formal study of Southern history, Reed has read widely and in depth about the South. His primary focus is upon Southerners' present-day culture and consciousness, but he knows that one must approach the South historically in order to understand the place and its people. Why is the South so different from the rest of the country? Rupert Vance, Reed's predecessor in sociology at Chapel Hill, once observed that the very existence of the South is a triumph of history over geography and economics. The South has resisted being assimilated by the larger United States and has kept a personality that is distinctly its own.That is why Reed celebrates the South. His essays cover everything from great thinkers about the South--Eugene D. Genovese, C. Vann Woodward, M. E. Bradford--to the uniqueness of a region that was once a hotbed of racism, but has recently attracted hundreds of thousands of blacks transplanted from the North. There are even a few chapters about Southerners who have devoted their talents to different subjects altogether, from politics or soft drinks to rock and roll or the design of silver jewelry. Reed writes with wit and Southern charm, never afraid to speak his mind, even when it comes to taking his beloved South to task. While readers may not share all his opinions, most will agree that John Shelton Reed is one of the best "South watchers" there is.