This book was suggested to me by a friend who was a teacher, and how glad I am that I read it. It takes place in the 1960s on a Gullah Island off South Carolina and is actually an autobiography of Conroy's year plus on the island teaching black kids. The first few chapters deal with his teaching the children, which I found interesting, but just as I was beginning to lose a little interest he changed and began talking about the people he met on the island--good character studies. And then he swit...

The waterway that separates Daufuskie Island from the mainland of South Carolina does not seem too wide, if one is simply looking at a map. Daufuskie is one of the Sea Islands that are renowned for their natural beauty. Yet it is also a place where the profusion of heavy manufacturing plants around Savannah, Georgia, fostered water pollution that devastated the fishing industry upon which the island’s predominantly African-American residents had long depended for their livelihood. And in the lat...

This was another outstanding book by Pat Conroy,he is a amazing storyteller. This book really makes you think about how society and how racism plays a big part in it. The characters were believable and you often felt sympathy for some of the characters. What separates Pat from most authors is the fact that lives what he writes, he is not just telling the story but he actually lived through it.

When Pat Conroy was a new teacher, he set out for a small island off the coast of South Carolina in 1969/70 to teach poor kids at a black school there. What a culture shock! Not only did these kids mostly not know how to read or write, but they had never experienced Halloween! Pat did a lot for these kids over the year, and taught them in unorthodox ways. I thought this was a memoir, but it was only at the very end of the book that it said it was “based on” his year on the island. I think it als...

I was really impressed with this book. Not only did I enjoy the story, which is true, but I also enjoyed the writing of Pat Conroy. This is the first book I have read by Conroy. This is about the experience Conroy had in the early 70’s teaching in a one room school house on Yamacraw Island (which is the pseudonym for Daufuskie Island), an island off the coast of South Carolina. This island was populated by mostly African Americans. The experience was truly eye opening . It really depicted the so...

A memoir about a white teacher teaching illiterate African-American kids on a wee island off the coast of South Carolina, doubtlessly a progressive story in its day (published 1972). But it hasn’t aged well. I gave up 40% of the way in, partly from the cringeworthy paternalism, partly because the racism of most of the white folks was rendered much more vividly on the page than any of the actual students were, but mostly because this all ended up being so incredibly boring.

In 1969, Pat Conroy, a young idealistic teacher, accepted a position at a two room school house on an impoverished and isolated island off the coast of South Carolina. He is assigned the class of 5th-8th graders. The largely segregated school district of which this island was a part, had presumed that these Black children were inherently incapable of learning and treated them accordingly. He found a group of 18 students who could not recite the alphabet, let alone read, could not count to 10, le...

I love Pat Conroy.I love his books so much that of the few that I have not read, I save them the way some people might save a bottle of Romanee-Conti Burgandy, letting it collect dust for years until there's a moment worthy of its uncorking.2020 seems like that moment.The Water is Wide is an autobiographical retelling of his experience as a 22-year old, when having been rejected from the Peace Corps, he took a teaching job at an all-black school on Daufuskie Island (South Carolina). This book of...

I realize this book has an underlying focus on racism in the South in the late '60s, but the other plot line I what resonated with me-a gifted teacher unfairly losing his job. I lost mine 10 years ago, gosh as long ago now as I taught. It was quite difficult for me to read how inspired Conroy was in the classroom, how much he cared about his students and their minds and futures only to be told he's insubordinate and no longer wanted. "To fire me so insensitively is one thing, but they try to des...

I had gotten a copy of this book a while back for a few reasons:1. It takes place in SC2. Pat Conroy is a SC writer3. I like some of his stuff, despite his lunatic family4. I had fond memories of the movie5. One of my favorite folk songs is "The Water is Wide".6. A friend of mine is mentioned in the afterword.I saw the movie made from this book when I was a teenager, a few years before my family moved to South CArolina. It made a big impression on me, so it was with some trepidation that I actua...

Here’s an author I had overlooked, regrettably, as my prejudice had relegated him to a grade B author – too popular to really be any good (or so I thought). I had even been to his beloved Charleston a couple of years ago, and was told that he was “the guy” to read before going, but I ignored that. Most of all, he was in my favorite local bookstore 5 years ago, Left Bank books in Saint Louis, and I did not show. Then last year someone at work gave me this book as a gift, and I have finally read i...

This is an enlightening book and also obviously the book of a young man as it is at times both overwhelmingly idealistic and alarmingly naive. Pat Conroy agreed to teach for a year on Yamacraw Island off the coast of South Carolina. There he encounters a world apart, conditions unlike anything he has encountered in his teaching on the mainland. He is to teach the children of the island, the people who used to live from fishing but now can't support themselves from polluted waters. He encounters

I want everybody to read, no listen to, The Water is Wide. It is that good a book. There are sublime sentences, most often straight out of the mouths of the eighteen black kids whom he's teaching, 1969-970, on Yamacraw Island (Daufuski Island), South Carolina. Until he got kicked out for insubordination after one year as a teacher! That is told at the very beginning so it is no spoiler. He is a fantastic teacher. He is the kind of teacher these kids needed. In the prologue the author says how he...

This is probably more of a reflection than a"review" I read this book when I first started teaching, and my naive and much younger self wanted to be exactly the kind of teacher Pat Conroy had wanted to be-one who worked with children who needed me and whose lives I could touch in some way-only I would do it better of course! My first teaching job plunked me down in a non-air-conditioned overcrowded school in Little Havana (in the heart of the city of Miami, FL for you non-natives) with 100% of m...

This was the first Pat Conroy book I read, and several years later, I had an opportunity to spend some time on Yamacraw, the island where he taught school. It was a magical place, with sandy roads shaded by great oak trees dripping with spanish moss. The people lived in backwards conditions, but they were tied to the land and their relationship with the land and the ocean in a way that few if any of the rest of us will ever experience. This is an inspiring, uplifting book and I am a better perso...

Pat Conroy's memoir of his year teaching 1969-70. It's kids of Gullah dialect S.C. island living who don't have cultural context to the English and other subjects, like American History and reading skills- that he is trying to teach them. He tries to use active trips, other activities which give experience and relate to their family and island life- instead of the usual physical consequence and heavily redundant reciting lessons of former and approved school structure. So he argues with the boss...

Pat Conroy is one of my favorite authors now. I loved “Beach Music” so very much. His writing style is just wonderful. This book is a memoir. Conroy spent a year teaching at an all-black school on an island off South Carolina. This is the islandand here is the school.He was faced with endless challenges. Since it was 1969, racism was a huge problem. Another challenge was the awful administration. Towards the end of the book, I realized that they made a movie based on this book. I now remember se...

Published in the early 70’s, this is the phenomenal memoir of Pat Conroy as a teacher in 1969, on Defuskie Island, SC. His students were all black and mostly illiterate due to an “out of sight, out of mind” and racist mindset perpetuated by the school board on the mainland. Without going into all Pat did for those students, he was fired trying to bring joyous teaching and exposure to the world beyond their island. However he did not have the political skills to better the system. Because this st...

To not give this book 5-stars and add it to my 'favorites' list would be denying my 60 year quest of finding and reading great literature . The author's range of vocabulary had me checking on word definitions in every chapter . His descriptive powers of bringing you to the scenery , culture and society of Charleston , South Carolina were spot on , and made me wish I had spent more time in that city when I traveled in the Southeast .I had a good friend that was a fellow lover of great books that

What can I say? I LOVE Pat Conroy's writing! In My Losing Season the way he describes a basketball game is pure poetry. While I was hanging about the local bookseller (as opposed to a book store) waiting for Conroy to write another book, I realized I had never read The Water is Wide. I don't know how I missed a Conroy book. I bought a copy and devoured it as soon as I got home! After having read all his other books and knowing his family history, it was an interesting read. He wrote this book be...