From my list on books that do not flinch when dealing with difficult circumstances.
Why am I passionate about this?
Family history has always fascinated me. I didn’t want mine to be buried with my loved ones. So, out of curiosity, I asked relatives lots of questions. If unsatisfied, I sought answers elsewhere. I traveled as far as Celle San Vito, Italy, where my grandfather was born, to solve a one-hundred-year-old mystery, and I filmed it for others to enjoy. I’ve memorialized momentous family events in poems, handmade greeting cards, memory books, screenplays, a documentary, and now, in my memoir A Cup of Tea on the Commode. The books on my list are about “family.” I’ve been moved by each, and I hope they move you as well.
Mark's book list on books that do not flinch when dealing with difficult circumstances
Why did Mark love this book?
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 my mother.
4 authors picked All Over But the Shoutin' as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winner and bestselling author, "a grand memoir.... Bragg tells about the South with such power and bone-naked love ... he will make you cry" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The New York Times. It is also the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running…