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    Gloryland: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Gloryland: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Gloryland: A Novel
    Ebook291 pages8 hours

    Gloryland: A Novel

    By Shelton Johnson

    5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A work of extraordinary imagination and sympathy, a journey from slavery to the mountaintop, perfectly realized.” —Ken Burns, American filmmaker
     
    Born on Emancipation Day, 1863, to a sharecropping family of black and Indian blood, Elijah Yancy never lived as a slave—but his self-image as a free person is at war with his surroundings: Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the Reconstructed South. Exiled for his own survival as a teenager, Elijah walks west to the Nebraska plains—and, like other rootless young African-American men of that era, joins up with the US cavalry.
     
    The trajectory of Elijah’s army career parallels the nation’s imperial adventures in the late 19th century: subduing Native Americans in the West, quelling rebellion in the Philippines. Haunted by the terrors endured by black Americans and by his part in persecuting other people of color, Elijah is sustained only by visions, memories, prayers, and his questing spirit—which ultimately finds a home when his troop is posted to the newly created Yosemite National Park in 1903. Here, living with little beyond mountain light, running water, campfires, and stars, he becomes a man who owns himself completely, while knowing he’s left pieces of himself scattered along his life’s path like pebbles on a creek bed.
     
    “Seen through the fresh eyes of buffalo soldier Elijah Yancy, Yosemite is Gloryland, his true home. Shelton Johnson has written a beautiful novel about Elijah’s journey.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of China Men and The Woman Warrior
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJul 1, 2010
    ISBN9781578051816
    Unavailable
    Gloryland: A Novel

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    Reviews for Gloryland

    5/5

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    • 5/5
      Elijah Yancey is a black soldier in the U S Cavalry, the 9th (late 19th, early 20th centuries) - a Buffalo Soldier as they were called. He's also a bit of a poet - very introspective. As the years of soldiering give way, so does the anger at how his race has been treated. It grows into something else - a deep relationship with his ancestors (respect really) and an even deeper understanding of God from the canyons and meadows and stars and grizzly bears of Yosemite National Park. I liked the excerpts from the "Cavalry Tactics" manual at the beginning of each chapter - gave it a necessary 'grounding'. Only someone who has lived and worked at Yosemite could portray it in such a personal and beautiful way and Johnson is that person, being a ranger at Yosemite. Makes me so want to go there and see what he (or Elijah) has seen, hear God talking like Elijah said: ...when God's talking, you shup up.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely LOVED this book! Shelton Johnson, a park ranger at Yosemite, presents this fictional memoir of an African American/Indian man named Elijah Yancy who leaves his home and family in South Carolina and ends up joining the army in the late 1800s. After travelling around the world fighting and killing those who just want freedom (a moral dilemma whose tragic irony is not lost on Elijah), his Calvary unit is assigned to patrol and protect the relatively new Yosemite National Park. Is it here that Elijah is able to fully come face-to-face with who he is and who he can be. Shelton's writing is simply superb, and you can feel his reverence for the Yosemite land in every word. There's also terrible tragedy amongst the beauty, as Elijah is repeatedly confronted by racism and violence. This is a very important book, not in the least because it tells the story of the buffalo soldiers, a sadly under-taught part of American history. My fingers are crossed that the next time I visit Yosemite, I cross paths with Ranger Johnson.
    • 5/5
      Excellent concise lyrical writing. Very moving and emotional portrayal of racism is post-Civil War US. Beautiful "word paintings" of the grandeur of Yosemite National Park.