March 2022 : Women's History Month Display

The 2022 Women’s History theme, “Providing Healing, Promoting Hope,” is both a tribute to the ceaseless work of caregivers and frontline workers during this ongoing pandemic and also a recognition of the thousands of ways that women of all cultures have provided both healing and hope throughout history. But, I do not have enough materials to create a display to fill up the case in the Research Room. 

So ... I decided to revisit Local Women Authors of  (mostly) Non-Fiction Materials with interesting book covers. I added two green scarves and 3 purple and white checked scarves to indicate both St. Patrick's Day and Mardi Gras. I threw in some paper shamrocks to enhance selections for shelves 2 and 3. 

Usually I start at the top of the case. But to change things up a bit, I'm going to work from the bottom up this time. 

Shelf 4 contains two books, both of which are about Hilton Head Island. Long-time Island resident and author Margaret Greer tells some Lowcountry tales about critters, people and history on Hilton Head Island in Short & Tall Tales of Hilton Head Island (2004). This coffee table book is lavishly illustrated with photographs by Barry Lowes and items from her husband's sketchbooks, paintings, and photographs of life on the island. Learn about "The Blue Lady," the Leamington light, the Devil Gun, and Daufuskie's midwife, Sarah Grant. Borrow a copy from one of the Library's local history sections. Past mayor Drew Laughlin wrote that Hilton Head Island: Sand, Sea and Sun authors Lydia Inglett and Martin McFie (2012) "provide a unique, photographic guide to much of Hilton Head Island's beauty that continuously captivates and enlightens both residents and visitors."

Shelf 3 contains three books. A Special Place and Time by Judy Hutson is a local publishing company Lydia Inglett imprint. In it the author recounts tales of Palmetto Bluff Plantation and some of its inhabitants during the 20th century including the Wilson, Beach, and Harvey families. She includes a lot of personal family photographs as illustrations.  

Billie Burn moved to Daufuskie Island in 1959 and was a postmaster and school bus driver from 1963 until the early 1980s.  She wrote An Island Named Daufuskie (shown in the center of shelf 3) to leave “a permanent record of the history, stories, and accounts that I have collected—mainly from Daufuskie people”.  There are copies that you can check out in the Local History sections. 

I have always liked Debbi Covington's cookbooks. I think that her Celebrate Everything: Delicious Menus for Festive Gatherings and Easy Entertaining is the one that I use most often at home. You can find copies in the Local History sections at the Branch Libraries to check out.

This month I put the title card near shelf 2. Beverly Jenning's book Shrimp Tales: Small Bites of History (2020) "captures the stories that swim in the salty souls of shrimpers who made their living fishing the waters of the Atlantic." She spent a decade interviewing shrimpers and others associated with commercial shrimping to produce permanent exhibits for the Port Royal Sound Maritime Center and the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head. This work served as the start for Shrimp Tales, a book that shows the old ways of shrimping evolving to the modern day. It reads not so much like a comprehensive history, but something tastier than that – a few good stories, some compelling insights, a collection of fascinating facts, some recipes, illustrations of tools of the trade and over 470 photos - some of which came from the BDC. 

Fripp Island : A History by Page Putnam Miller (2006) covers the development of the resort island over the past 200 years. In 2000 Miller moved with her husband, Charlie Davis, to Fripp Island. Active on the island and in the Beaufort community, she served as an elder in First Presbyterian Church and published a book about its history in 2012.  From 2000 to 2005 she was a Visiting Distinguished Lecturer in the Public History Program at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She was instrumental in the early movement to have Beaufort County designated a Reconstruction Era historical site by the National Park Service.

Gwine Home: A Gullah/Geechee Saga (2019) is a novel by artivist and Queen of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, Marquetta Goodwine. Gwine Home takes the readers into a Gullah/Geechee intergenerational saga centered on their spirituality and healing practices. The Gullah/Geechee history of the family is passed down from the elders to the youths as each day on the Sea Islands unfolds when the youth realize that there are changes happening to the environment and that there are threats to the land that the family has held for generations. Goodwine has authored more than a dozen books that are housed in the Research Room. 

Fran Marscher, a former journalist for the Island Packet, turned her interviews with area notables born between 1880 and 1940 into short sketches about daily life in southern Beaufort County during the 20th century for the History Press. Published in three volumes all beginning with the title Remembering the Way It Was, the one shown came out in 2006 and covers residents of Beaufort, Sheldon and the Sea Islands.

For a scrumptious and entertaining cookbook - and family tales - one can seldom find better than Sallie Ann Robinson's Kitchen: Food and Family Lore from the Lowcountry. (And, I don't even like cooking). She includes dishes that I grew up with: "Black-eyed Peas with Okra" and some I didn't, but should have, for example, 'Fuskie Shrimp and Blue Crab Burger."

In some ways the celebrity that was and remains Pat Conroy tends to overpower the contributions of other fine (and truly native born) Beaufort authors. A case in point is Valerie Sayers. She is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. Valerie Sayers is the author of a collection of stories, The Age of Infidelity, and six novels. Who Do You Love and Brain Fever were both named New York Times “Notable Books of the Year, and a film, "Due East," was based on her novels Due East and How I Got Him Back.  Sayers’s stories, essays, and reviews have appeared widely, in such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, Commonweal, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Image, Witness, and Prairie Schooner, and have been cited in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.  Her literary prizes include a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship and two Pushcart Prizes for fiction. She has been honored with the Kaneb, Sheedy, and Joyce Awards for Excellence in Teaching. Her body of work is represented in the display by her novel, The Distance Between Us (2018) in which Due East once again represents her hometown of Beaufort.  

We maintain a vertical file of clippings about her and her work. We share copies of her interview with Patti Just for Writer's Circle on DVD; and we have copies of her first 5 novels in the Research Room as part of an effort to create a literary history of the area. Perhaps of interest to some: I used to sing in the St. Peter's Catholic Church Choir with her mother and sister.

Stay tuned for an exposition about the April 2022 BDC Research Room Display Case - topic as yet undecided.