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Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-57131-275-4
Pages: 152
Publish Date: Dec, 2005
Genre: Nonfiction
At the End of Ridge Road
BY Joseph Bruchac
In the 1960s in graduate school, Joseph Bruchac studied with Grace Paley and met Allen Ginsberg. He went on to earn his PhD and work in Africa, an experience that confirmed his belief that native peoples all over the world possess the hard–won knowledge of humanity’s capacity for self–destruction, wisdom set down in their stories and traditions. Now in his sixties, Bruchac is known for keeping these stories alive through traditional Native American storytelling, original children’s books, fiction, and poetry. Books in his Keepers of the Earth series, coauthored with Michael Caduto, have sold millions of copies.
At the End of Ridge Road, a philosophical memoir, brings together the threads of Bruchac’s life and reveals the linkage between his interest in native cultures—he is Abenaki—and his views about human dignity and social justice. He begins by asking the reader to “take off your watch” and “live time” rather than be ruled by it. He then tells about his childhood in the Adirondacks, the Abenaki heritage of the region, his path from nature nut to jock to writer, and his house on Ridge Road. Through these stories, Bruchac emphasizes ideas that are important to many native tales, including understandings of time, ownership of land, and “the circle as a way of seeing.”
