Sign-In
Cart
The Slow Farm
Paperback
ISBN13: 9781940906065
Publisher: Ovenbird Books
Published: Feb 18 2014
Pages: 382
Weight: 1.07
Height: 0.85 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
In this coming-of-age memoir, Tarn Wilson explores the gifts and burdens of a counterculture childhood.
In the early 1970s, Wilson's hippie parents packed the family into a converted school bus with Suck Nixon painted on the side and aimed for the Canadian wilderness. They planned to raise their two young children close to the earth and free of shallow middle class values. When they settle on a remote island in British Columbia, their idealism smacks up against reality and threatens to tear apart the family.
Between each short lyric chapter, Wilson incorporates artifacts that illuminate the cultural forces shaping her parents' decisions, such as letters, recipes, photographs, timelines, newspaper clippings, and provocative excerpts from A Radical Approach to Child Rearing.
With both empathy and clear-eyed honesty, Wilson deconstructs the simplified narratives of the counterculture movement by sharing the story of one young, eager, flawed family's efforts to live the ideal. The book celebrates the power of the natural world, invites us to ask questions about how we raise children, and takes us on a journey of forgiveness. Ultimately, Wilson's story, although unusual, is all of ours: the path from the world as we wish it were to the one that exists, with all its beauty and imperfections.
Stanford Magazine says, Tales of her youthful fits and starts could spark nostalgia even in those who didn't grow up romping around in the words with near complete freedom.
Lia Purpura, award-winning poet and essayist, writes that Wilson reconstructs the powerful atmosphere of a past era, its magic, contentment and freedom, its restrictions and losses.
The genre-defining essayist Judith Kitchen says, Tarn Wilson deftly turns memoir into an interactive project.
Brenda Miller, co-author of the bestselling guide to creative nonfiction Tell It Slant, praises a textured memoir of childhood that captures the zeitgeist of the 60s . . .
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII
Warnicke, Retha M.
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man
Erdoes, Richard
Lame Deer, Chief Archie Fire
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
Through Mom's Eyes: Simple Wisdom from Mothers Who Raised Extraordinary Humans
Jones, Sheinelle
Hardcover