This Place of Memory: A Texas Perspective : a Collection

Joyce Gibson Roach

University of North Texas Press, 1992 - History - 161 pages

"These personal essays, poems, fiction . . . are best savored . . . amid the quiet comforts of your own special place of memories. It can bring forth tears, as well as smiles, of remembrance and recognition. It can leave you yearning to go home again--to people and places that now live only in your heart."--Dallas Morning News

"The perfect bedside companion . . . like fine candy--so good you may not be able to confine yourself to one or two pieces before bedtime. "--Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Offers some thought-provoking images and ideas about the notion of place, that home is where the heart is, whether that place is Dallas or Dimebox or somewhere that only exists in the back of the mind."--Texas Observer

"Even if you aren't a dyed-in-the wool Texan, this book will help you to understand Texans' remembrance and longing for a people, a way of life that seemed to belong just to Texas."--Denton Record-Chronicle

Contents

• II: 2
• III: 9
• IV: 16
• V: 23
• VI: 25
• VII: 32
• VIII: 35
• IX: 37
• X: 46
• XI: 52
• XII: 54
• XIII: 58
• XIV: 63
• XV: 67
• XVI: 84
• XVII: 89
• XVIII: 100
• XIX: 102
• XX: 105
• XXI: 108
• XXII: 112
• XXIII: 118
• XXIV: 120
• XXV: 121
• XXVI: 128
• XXVII: 130
• XXVIII: 132
• XXIX: 133
• XXX: 139
• XXXI: 144
• XXXII: 146
• XXXIII: 150

Popular passages

Page 17 - Pueblo potters, the creators of petroglyphs and oral narratives, never conceived of removing themselves from the earth and sky. So long as the human consciousness remains within the hills, canyons, cliffs, and the plants, clouds, and sky, the term landscape, as it has entered the English language, is misleading. "A portion of territory the eye can comprehend in a single view" does not correctly describe the relationship between the human being and his or her surroundings.‎

Page 17 - A portion of territory the eye can comprehend in a single view" does not correctly describe the relationship between the human being and his or her surroundings. This assumes the viewer is somehow outside or separate from the territory he or she surveys.‎

Page 18 - American ethic with respect to the physical world is a matter of reciprocal appropriation: appropriations in which man invests himself in the landscape, and at the same time incorporates the landscape into his own most fundamental experience.‎

Page viii - This summer country of my childhood, this place of memory, is filled with landscapes shimmering in light and color, moving with sounds and shapes I hardly ever describe, or put in my stories in so many words; they form only the living background of what I am trying to tell, so familiar to my characters they would hardly notice them; the sound of mourning doves in the live oaks...‎

About the author

Joyce Gibson Roach, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and member and past president of the Texas Folklore Society and a fellow in the Texas State Historical Association, is also a two-time winner of the Spur Award from Western Writers of America and is the winner of the Carr P. Collins Award for non-fiction from the TIL.

Bibliographic information

• Title: This Place of Memory: A Texas Perspective : a Collection
• Editor: Joyce Gibson Roach
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: University of North Texas Press, 1992
• ISBN: 0929398327, 9780929398327
• Length: 161 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / State & Local / General; History / United States / State & Local / Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX); Literary Collections / American / General; Literary Criticism / American / General; Literary Criticism / General