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A review by lanabug711
All Over But the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg
4.0
It's easy to see why Rick Bragg won a Pulitzer, because this book is very well written. Bragg switches between beautiful imagery and down-home dialect with ease. His reporter's talent for observation results in a very vivid picture for the reader.
Parts of his story resonated with what my dad has told me about his childhood - a mother who held the family together, a father who drank away the grocery money, picking cotton as soon as you're big enough to do it, etc. However, my dad emerged from his childhood poverty relatively unscathed, while it seems Bragg only got an even bigger chip on his shoulder. He is very cynical about religion, love, and anything that might present an obstacle to his career. On the other hand, it's clear that the suffering he saw as a reporter affected him profoundly. He writes very poignantly about the Haitian revolution, the Susan Smith case, etc.
Bragg seems to straddle a no-man's land between the haves and the have-nots. He acts as though he is better than his background, and yet he's very insecure about himself when he's placed in an urban situation. I get the idea that while he's a very talented writer, he's probably not a very nice person.
The one aspect of the book that rang the most sincere is his love for his momma. The chapter about her trip to New York when he received the Pulitzer was the sweetest one and the only one where the reader gets a true picture of how little his mother actually knew about the world outside her tiny home in rural Alabama.
Parts of his story resonated with what my dad has told me about his childhood - a mother who held the family together, a father who drank away the grocery money, picking cotton as soon as you're big enough to do it, etc. However, my dad emerged from his childhood poverty relatively unscathed, while it seems Bragg only got an even bigger chip on his shoulder. He is very cynical about religion, love, and anything that might present an obstacle to his career. On the other hand, it's clear that the suffering he saw as a reporter affected him profoundly. He writes very poignantly about the Haitian revolution, the Susan Smith case, etc.
Bragg seems to straddle a no-man's land between the haves and the have-nots. He acts as though he is better than his background, and yet he's very insecure about himself when he's placed in an urban situation. I get the idea that while he's a very talented writer, he's probably not a very nice person.
The one aspect of the book that rang the most sincere is his love for his momma. The chapter about her trip to New York when he received the Pulitzer was the sweetest one and the only one where the reader gets a true picture of how little his mother actually knew about the world outside her tiny home in rural Alabama.