Talk About Literature in Kansas is a program for every Kansan who loves to read and discuss good books. For
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Kansas Humanities Council
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Topeka KS 66603-3895
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Coming of Age in Rural America
The poet-farmer Wendell Berry says that people and land are connected by work. This work is
most often farming. The Latin root of the words “human” and “humility” is hummus, meaning soil.
People are of the earth. The men and women who farm have derived sustenance, both economic
and spiritual, through their connection to the land.
However, throughout the twentieth century, this relationship has changed considerably. America,
once a largely agrarian culture, has been industrialized, urbanized, and homogenized through
technological advances and corporate development, but farming still persists as a vital part of our
nation’s culture and economy.
The novels in this series trace the changes in rural America from the late-nineteenth century to
the present and represent all regions of the country. All of these stories describe young people who
are trying to learn about the world by looking to their families, communities, and the land around
them. Some of their stories are triumphant, some are tragic, but all are true to their individual visions
of the cycles of rural life and what it is like to be at the threshold of adulthood.
Farmer Boy (1933) by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957)
This Laura Ingalls Wilder book spans one year in the boyhood life of her husband, Almanzo,
when he lived with his family on a farm in northern New York state during the late 1860s. Nine-yearold Almanzo Wilder longs to have a colt of his own, but he is too little. However, he enjoys the farm
work that he is big enough to do, like breaking the calves, milking the cows, caring for his pig, Lucy,
and helping his father fill the ice house, shear sheep, and thresh wheat. Though Almanzo’s brother,
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Royal, and his sister, Eliza Jane, are lured by the charms of town life, Almanzo’s admiration for his
father and his love of the daily life on the family farm prove him to be a true farmer boy. 371 pp.
Good Land, or My Life as a Farm Boy (1997) by Bruce Bair (1944- )
Bruce Bair’s book is a memoir of his struggle to leave the family farm in western Kansas and the
tyrannical control of his father, Harold. However, Bair’s hard luck and “half-love for farming” keep
tugging him back.
Bair’s story offers an honest, unromanticized look at the changes in American
culture and mechanized agriculture in the late twentieth century, as well as an exploration of a
lifetime of brutal tension between a father and son. From sordid tales of the one-room schoolhouse
to meditations from the seat of a tractor, Bair narrates these episodes of farm life with cynical wit.
189 pp.
Nathan Coulter (1960, 1985) by Wendell Berry (1934- )
The writer and farmer Wendell Berry once said, “What I stand on, I stand for.”
This same
sentiment is expressed in Nathan Coulter, his very first book and the first in a series of novels and
short stories centering around the fictional farm community of Port William, Kentucky.
This book
explores Nathan’s boyhood connection to family, community, nature, and the land – all issues and
virtues that Berry expounds in his large and important body of work.
Nathan’s story is a
multigenerational look at learning, loss, and becoming a man. 180 pp.
Under the Feet of Jesus (1995) by Helena María Viramontes (1954- )
For thirteen-year-old Estrella and her migrant worker family, “every uncertainty rested on one
certainty:
food.”
Following the California fruit harvests, this family suffers from extreme poverty,
rootlessness, and the harsh, dangerous working conditions of the fields. These circumstances have
forced Estrella to grow up much too quickly. In her unstable, abandoned mother, Estrella sees the
terrible possibilities of her own future life.
When she meets Alejo, a young migrant worker, she
experiences the joy of first love and a nurturing tenderness that she has rarely experienced in her life.
When Alejo becomes gravely ill as a result of being doused by pesticides, Estrella and her family care
for him as best they can. This moving, lyrical novel gives voice to the often unheard hardships of
American migrant farm workers. 180 pp.
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Winter Wheat (1944) by Mildred Walker (1905-1998)
Ellen Webb, a bright, strong-willed daughter of wheat farmers, attempts to define herself in the
context of her parents (a Russian immigrant mother and a Vermont-born father), the community, and
the world of the vast Montana plains. This novel follows Ellen through a year and a half of her young
life at the beginning of the second World War. After getting a good price for their wheat, Ellen’s
folks are able to send her to college in Minnesota, where she falls in love with her studies and with a
young man named Gil. But their differences rend them apart and Ellen returns to Montana to make
her own way by teaching in a rural school. This coming of age story treads the delicate balance of
the need for both autonomy and connection as Ellen must find her place among the people and on
the land that she loves. 306 pp.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Berry, Wendell. A Place on Earth. New York: North Point, 1985 (1967 original publication).
____. Remembering. New York, North Point, 1990.
____. The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Township . New York: North Point, 1989.
Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988 (1918 original publication).
Myers, Kent. Witness of Combines. University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
Smiley, Jane. A Thousand Acres. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991.
Thompson, Era Bell. American Daughter. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1966 (1946 original
publication).
Unger, Douglas. Leaving the Land. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. By the Shores of Silver Lake. New York: HarperCollins, 1987.
____. These Happy Golden Years. New York, HarperTrophy, 1971.