Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
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An
Enchanted Land is a one-woman show about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who so accurately captured the spirit
and the language of the people of this area of Florida. This was
a woman who was willing to give up family, friends and comforts to explore
one of the last untamed areas of the Florida wilderness. Her bold,
passionate and tenacious personality drove her to conquer incredible obstacles
to remain on the land that she believed was her spiritual homeland, Cross
Creek.
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She was truly a pioneer exploring
the primitive wilderness. She had no experience with the outdoors
except for her childhood trips to her father’s farm, but she was determined
to find harmony in this “half-wild, backwoods country.” She saw any
obstacles that arose as challenges, confronted them head on and conquered
them. She wrote, “All this strenuous out-door stuff, is new to me
since coming to Florida. I’ve taken to it naturally, but my chief
claim to capability in such matters lies only in being game for anything.”
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She was indeed “game for anything.”
When searching for “intimate and accurate details” for her new work, she
went to live with a moonshining family on the Oklawaha River in the big
scrub. She joined them in their “lawless” activities--hunting deer
with a light at night, out of season, dynamiting mullet, shooting limpkin.
She became so immersed in these people’s lives that she felt at times she
was “in danger of losing all sophistication and perspective.” |
But it was her intensity of commitment,
her mystical connection with the land and the people, her respect and admiration
of their struggle for existence that gave her her unique voice. It
was definitely the voice of one of the last untamed corners of the American
frontier. Her unique voice did not go unnoticed. She was recognized
worldwide.
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This success brought her into the
company of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neale
Hurston, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens and Eleanor Roosevelt with whom
she felt as comfortable as with the hunters, the farmers and the “crackers”
that she lived with in the Florida wilderness.
An Enchanted Land captures
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ wonderful spirit, her love of this land and the
people of this enchanting area of Florida that we, too, call home. |
and showtimes.
