All Over But the Shoutin'

A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, Rick Bragg’s writing is poetry.

He grew up dirt poor in Alabama. I grew up in a middle-class suburb in New Jersey. He and I have little in common but our love for our mothers. This story touched me on many levels. All mothers sacrifice to some extent in raising their children, but Rick’s mother went above and beyond while facing dire circumstances to provide for hers.

It made me appreciate my mother even more. And though I hadn’t discovered this book prior to my story, it reconfirmed my commitment to… show more.

Bragg’s homage to the strength of his mother, who picked cotton and survived an abusive marriage, his ode to the beauty and strangeness of his southern roots, and his journey out of the South into the wider world while carrying The South in his bones is an entirely satisfying and moving story of creating identity and finding home inside yourself.

I often teach this book in my memoir workshops and it is always one of the most popular reads.

After my freshman year of college in 1994, a professor/mentor of mine gave me a copy of this book, enclosing a hand-written note in which he said he felt confident that I would someday end up on a “Pulitzer wall,” just like Bragg had at The New York Times.

I read portions and chapters of this book every year, not only because Bragg writes so beautifully but also because, though he and I come from disparate cultural and geographical backgrounds, there are aspects of his rise through daily journalism that were similar to mine.

One of those similarities: Bragg started… show more.

Pulitzer prize-winning and best-selling author Rick Bragg depicts hardscrabble, family life in rural Alabama, with a bad-tempered, hard-drinking father and a mother who won’t see her children go without. Bragg’s honest voice is immediate and compelling, and the visceral feel of the setting is the perfect backdrop for this rags to riches story of a man who triumphs over adversity to become a widely acclaimed writer. Bragg’s use of Southern vernacular is what makes this story.