Book Review: All Over But the Shoutin' - Rick Bragg
The autobiography of Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Rick Bragg who grew up in rural Alabama the son of poor parents struggling to earn a living. His mother picked cotton in the fields by hand and his father struggled with demons of war and alcoholism. Bragg tells the story of growing up in the 1960s and 1970s when children spent their time outside climbing trees, playing in creek beds, and racing old bikes down red clay dirt roads. At night they fell asleep listening to crickets while Faron Young and Little Jimmy Dickens sang on the radio. He tells the vivid details of his father's raging anger and abandonment of the family while his mother wore worn out pants and shoes, eating the leftovers after feeding all of her children dinner. The story paints a sharp contrast of his father's self focus versus his mother's dedication to her family. While it seemed that young Rick would follow in the footsteps of every other male in the area down a path of a lifelong career at the mill, sentenced to a penitentiary, or submitting to alcoholism, he instead became a journalist and escaped the bonds of rural poverty.
It is a well written story accurately portraying the rural South in the 60s and 70s detailing the struggles of poverty and racism and the beauty of the love of a mother.
I highly recommend this book. I found myself aggravated every time I had to stop and set it down.
