Rick Bragg

A correspondent for "The New York Times" recounts growing up in the Alabama hills, the son of a violent veteran and a mother who tried to insulate her children from poverty and ignorance

All Over But the Shoutin'

All Over but the Shoutin'

Melody Izard

I'm pretty sure I promised myself I was not going to let a ton of books get all bunched up without reviews. But I have. So I have to not only exercise my memory cells, but I'm faced with the daunting task of reviewing a bunch all at once.

I'm not going to do this one justice.

Rick Bragg is a braggart and I'm sure he is a pompous full of himself kind of guy. Oh, I don't really know this. But you get that vibe from his writing. Especially a memoir. But lordy, lordy! I think he deserves to be full of himself. His writing is just about near perfect. He bores down into the soul of whatever his subject matter is. He pushes aside the dressing and talks about the bones and the blood. I might not want to count on him to have my back in a crisis, but I sure would like to be sitting across from him at a Thanksgiving dinner.

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This is a very well-written memoir of an award-winning journalist who overcomes a childhood of extreme poverty and climbs to the top of his profession.

Bragg doesn't spare the reader from feeling the many indignities and sufferings of being poor. To grow up still using an outhouse in the 1950's and 1960's seems unthinkable but that was one of the many signs of the conditions he lived in. He details his life from the early years to adulthood, paying particular homage to his mother who did a pretty remarkable job raising three boys on her own. She is a mother who skipped many meals so her boys would have something to eat, sometimes living on the marrow she sucked from the bones they left on their plates. Bragg also doesn't shy away from the thorny issue of his relationship with his father. The best that could be said about the man is that he left his family alone for a good many years. 

Bragg also acknowledges his own shortcomings as he struggled with feeling inadequate next to his formally educated peers and had a self-described "chip on his shoulder" for a long time. Out of the three boys, one is happily married with a family and lives a step above the poverty line. The other has fallen into the trap of alcoholism like their father. Bragg is the only one who made it out of the cycle of poverty. However, his childhood left its mark on him in a different way as he is unable to commit to marriage and has no interest in having a family.

Since the book was written in 1996, I found myself curious to know what happened to Bragg, his brothers, and their mother during the past 10-15 years and wish there was a sequel. 

Knowing that there are many who live today just the way he did 50 years ago, the book really gave me an appreciation for what I have been blessed with.

All Over But the Shoutin'

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