Summary of Harry Crews's A Childhood

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 My first memory is of a time ten years before I was born, and the memory takes place where I have never been and involves my father, whom I never knew. He had thought of little else since it became almost impossible for him to give water because of the fire that started in his stomach and felt like it burned through raw flesh every time he had to water off.

#2 I have always slipped into and out of identities as easily as other people slip into and out of their clothes. I have never been certain of who I am. I have always been influenced by the people and the place I come from.

#3 I have always known that part of me never left the place where I was born. I have always relied on my own memory and the memory of others for what follows here: the biography of a childhood which is the biography of a place and a way of life gone forever out of the world.

#4 My father, who was born in 1927, started back home with his friend Cecil in the Model T Ford in 1927. They had been down in the swamp for six years, and they were in no particular hurry. It took them three weeks to make the 500 miles up the coast of Florida.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669385974

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Insights on Harry Crews's A Childhood

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

My first memory is of a time ten years before I was born, and the memory takes place where I have never been and involves my father, whom I never knew. He had thought of little else since it became almost impossible for him to give water because of the fire that started in his stomach and felt like it burned through raw flesh every time he had to water off.

#2

I have always slipped into and out of identities as easily as other people slip into and out of their clothes. I have never been certain of who I am. I have always been influenced by the people and the place I come from.

#3

I have always known that part of me never left the place where I was born. I have always relied on my own memory and the memory of others for what follows here: the biography of a childhood which is the biography of a place and a way of life gone forever out of the world.

#4

My father, who was born in 1927, started back home with his friend Cecil in the Model T Ford in 1927. They had been down in the swamp for six years, and they were in no particular hurry. It took them three weeks to make the 500 miles up the coast of Florida.

#5

When my father went down to the Everglades, he started on a gang