THE BOOKS OF JONATHAN MAY
Jonathan May at retirement party for Sawyerville postmaster Louvinia Dedrick, 2013.
Raised in Sawyerville, Alabama, JONATHAN MAY attended school in nearby Greensboro, then Birmingham-Southern College where he majored in English literature. After his moving to New York and while working at a clerical job in the Journalism Library at Columbia University, he attended the School of Library Service there part time and earned a Masters in library science. Both of those schools have now been closed, but he claims that the fault in neither case is his. He worked in the Serials and Documents Acquisitions Division for several years before becoming government documents librarian in 1976 in the newly established separate documents library. He retired early from librarianship to return to his family home after the death of his parents, accompanied on that adventure by Tom Miller, his companion of some 22 years. Learning that both Jonathan and Tom were writing, local friends began to refer to their home as "the Sawyerville Fiction Factory." They lived and worked together there until Tom's death in December, 2007. Over the years they shared the Sawyerville property with four goats (Clover, Buttercup, Daisy, and Ageratum), two dogs (Huckleberry and Roscoe), and three cats (Catalina, Sibling, and Kitty Witty), now all gone. In addition to writing, Jonathan's interests include films, reading, and dodging tornadoes in the springtime and hurricanes in the summer and fall.
He thought that his name was distinctive enough that a pseudonym was unnecessary. He totally forgot all those constructions such as "Jonathan may go to town or he may not." Oh well, done is done.
Jonathan’s presently available nonfiction books are listed below. They may be purchased in paperback and eBook editions from Amazon and from other online dealers and bookstores. His two novels are described on separate pages under the tab header tab for this entry.
WHITE ON BLACK: THINKING ABOUT RACE IN A SMALL ALABAMA COMMUNITY.
An White 84-year-old resident of Sawyerville, Alabama except for his 27 years working in the Columbia University Libraries in New York reflects on growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in a racist rural society, describes his own and his family’s interactions with Black neighbors over time, ponders his own evolving attitudes concerning racial matters, and reveals his family’s recent discovery of a number of mixed-race first and second cousins and how that is dealt with in various ways. Along the way he gives a great deal of information about his community, its past, present, and possible future. Using his community as primary focus he thinks about race in America. His conclusions share both hope and despair.
An opinionated old codger, he is not averse to sharing those opinions. He often starts with facts and moves into matters speculative, always trying to clarify wen that occurs.
ISBN-13: 979-8860120051
REMEMBERING MY FOREBEARS: THE TURBERVILLES OF GREENSBORO AND THE MAYS OF HOLLOW SQUARE AND SAWYERVILLE, HALE COUNTY, ALABAMA.
The writer considers the lives of his Turberville mother and his May father, their parents, and their siblings and tries to make sense of how he came to be and how he was shaped by the families before him. He does not shy away from tales of alcoholism, depression, religious mania, suicide, murder, and mysterious death. He is frank about what is known of his family's mixed-race relationships and kinships. In his attempt to understand, even to love, he speculates freely from known fact, always careful to alert the reader as he does. His mother used to say of her relatives, “You want to whip some and drown some!” He tries to understand and do neither. This volume combines two earlier works on his parents' families, for he began to realize that they were one story after all. The stories revealed go beyond mere family history and suggest much about the region and the society in which they lived.
ISBN-13: 979-8872350965
SAWYERVILLE, ALABAMA, AND THE EARLIER COMMUNITIES OF ERIE AND HOLLOW SQUARE: History and Reminiscence.
The small community of Sawyerville, Alabama and its predecessor communities of Erie and Hollow Square have a long history in the state involving persons White and Black and a mixture of both. In addition to giving the reader some of its history, the author also presents stories of some of the people who lived there or have their origins there. He meditates upon the past and speculates about the future. It is a community that he cherishes. In a way this small work completes a trilogy with the two books listed above.
ISBN-13 : 979-8324898755
TELLING STORIES: FRAGMENTS OF A LIFE.
A life doesn’t come at you all at once. You experience it in bits and pieces. In this book Jonathan May picks up some of those pieces to examine. His dogs, his cats, his community over time. His younger years growing up in rural Alabama. His years in New York working at Columbia University in the library of the school of journalism and in various government documents operations. His experience immersing himself in New York’s theater, ballet, and movies. His favorite restaurant, Fuji, and friends he made there. His mother and his father. He remembers friends and food, follies and fancies. At time it seems he may be making some sense out of it all. Or maybe he just sees better a path that he followed instead of a path that he planned.
ISBN-13: 978-1511629836
DREAMS, NIGHTMARES, AND PONDERATIONS: A Book of Essays.
A miscellany of essays that talk with each other about people and dogs, the here and the hereafter, moves and television, sex and drag in the theater, the past and the future, artificial intelligence and human intelligence (or the lack of it). There is a short story and a couple of pens, for why not? Opinionated? Heck, yes!
ISBN-13 : 979-8332599910
STAR-GAZING AND NAVEL-GAZING: ART, ARTISTS, AND ME.
The author looks back on major (and a few minor) literary and motion picture and other artists he has experienced in a lifetime of reading and viewing. William Faulkner, Ross Macdonald, Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick, Terence Davies. and Alexander Sokurov make significant appearances. He reflects on his own works, much lesser in accomplishment than the greats, to indicate something of what he does share with them. In spite of his great admiration for great artists, the author also has a taste for works of a lesser nature, and these he shares as well.
ISBN-13: 979-8863591605
Raised in Sawyerville, Alabama, JONATHAN MAY attended school in nearby Greensboro, then Birmingham-Southern College where he majored in English literature. After his moving to New York and while working at a clerical job in the Journalism Library at Columbia University, he attended the School of Library Service there part time and earned a Masters in library science. Both of those schools have now been closed, but he claims that the fault in neither case is his. He worked in the Serials and Documents Acquisitions Division for several years before becoming government documents librarian in 1976 in the newly established separate documents library. He retired early from librarianship to return to his family home after the death of his parents, accompanied on that adventure by Tom Miller, his companion of some 22 years. Learning that both Jonathan and Tom were writing, local friends began to refer to their home as "the Sawyerville Fiction Factory." They lived and worked together there until Tom's death in December, 2007. Over the years they shared the Sawyerville property with four goats (Clover, Buttercup, Daisy, and Ageratum), two dogs (Huckleberry and Roscoe), and three cats (Catalina, Sibling, and Kitty Witty), now all gone. In addition to writing, Jonathan's interests include films, reading, and dodging tornadoes in the springtime and hurricanes in the summer and fall.
He thought that his name was distinctive enough that a pseudonym was unnecessary. He totally forgot all those constructions such as "Jonathan may go to town or he may not." Oh well, done is done.
Jonathan’s presently available nonfiction books are listed below. They may be purchased in paperback and eBook editions from Amazon and from other online dealers and bookstores. His two novels are described on separate pages under the tab header tab for this entry.
WHITE ON BLACK: THINKING ABOUT RACE IN A SMALL ALABAMA COMMUNITY.
An White 84-year-old resident of Sawyerville, Alabama except for his 27 years working in the Columbia University Libraries in New York reflects on growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in a racist rural society, describes his own and his family’s interactions with Black neighbors over time, ponders his own evolving attitudes concerning racial matters, and reveals his family’s recent discovery of a number of mixed-race first and second cousins and how that is dealt with in various ways. Along the way he gives a great deal of information about his community, its past, present, and possible future. Using his community as primary focus he thinks about race in America. His conclusions share both hope and despair.
An opinionated old codger, he is not averse to sharing those opinions. He often starts with facts and moves into matters speculative, always trying to clarify wen that occurs.
ISBN-13: 979-8860120051
REMEMBERING MY FOREBEARS: THE TURBERVILLES OF GREENSBORO AND THE MAYS OF HOLLOW SQUARE AND SAWYERVILLE, HALE COUNTY, ALABAMA.
The writer considers the lives of his Turberville mother and his May father, their parents, and their siblings and tries to make sense of how he came to be and how he was shaped by the families before him. He does not shy away from tales of alcoholism, depression, religious mania, suicide, murder, and mysterious death. He is frank about what is known of his family's mixed-race relationships and kinships. In his attempt to understand, even to love, he speculates freely from known fact, always careful to alert the reader as he does. His mother used to say of her relatives, “You want to whip some and drown some!” He tries to understand and do neither. This volume combines two earlier works on his parents' families, for he began to realize that they were one story after all. The stories revealed go beyond mere family history and suggest much about the region and the society in which they lived.
ISBN-13: 979-8872350965
SAWYERVILLE, ALABAMA, AND THE EARLIER COMMUNITIES OF ERIE AND HOLLOW SQUARE: History and Reminiscence.
The small community of Sawyerville, Alabama and its predecessor communities of Erie and Hollow Square have a long history in the state involving persons White and Black and a mixture of both. In addition to giving the reader some of its history, the author also presents stories of some of the people who lived there or have their origins there. He meditates upon the past and speculates about the future. It is a community that he cherishes. In a way this small work completes a trilogy with the two books listed above.
ISBN-13 : 979-8324898755
TELLING STORIES: FRAGMENTS OF A LIFE.
A life doesn’t come at you all at once. You experience it in bits and pieces. In this book Jonathan May picks up some of those pieces to examine. His dogs, his cats, his community over time. His younger years growing up in rural Alabama. His years in New York working at Columbia University in the library of the school of journalism and in various government documents operations. His experience immersing himself in New York’s theater, ballet, and movies. His favorite restaurant, Fuji, and friends he made there. His mother and his father. He remembers friends and food, follies and fancies. At time it seems he may be making some sense out of it all. Or maybe he just sees better a path that he followed instead of a path that he planned.
ISBN-13: 978-1511629836
DREAMS, NIGHTMARES, AND PONDERATIONS: A Book of Essays.
A miscellany of essays that talk with each other about people and dogs, the here and the hereafter, moves and television, sex and drag in the theater, the past and the future, artificial intelligence and human intelligence (or the lack of it). There is a short story and a couple of pens, for why not? Opinionated? Heck, yes!
ISBN-13 : 979-8332599910
STAR-GAZING AND NAVEL-GAZING: ART, ARTISTS, AND ME.
The author looks back on major (and a few minor) literary and motion picture and other artists he has experienced in a lifetime of reading and viewing. William Faulkner, Ross Macdonald, Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick, Terence Davies. and Alexander Sokurov make significant appearances. He reflects on his own works, much lesser in accomplishment than the greats, to indicate something of what he does share with them. In spite of his great admiration for great artists, the author also has a taste for works of a lesser nature, and these he shares as well.
ISBN-13: 979-8863591605
|
|
|
|
|
|