Overwrought. What other writers use sparingly, he piles on unrelentingly. It's a compelling personal story, and his turns of phrase are beautiful, but stacked up together as they are.... overwrought. ( )

This was a brilliant book and I really enjoyed it.

Back Cover Blurb:
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 the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most.
But at the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg's mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people's cotton so that her children wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives - and the country that shaped and nourished them - with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable. ( )

This memoir by Rick Bragg tells of his life growing up in the South. He was raised in a poor family by a mother who dearly loved her children. This book reads like a love song to his mother. Braggs father was a drunk and alternated between being neglectful and abusive. His mother sacraficed everything to raise her 3 boys as best she could. The memoir chronicles Braggs climb out of poverty and into the world of journalism where he ultimately wins the Pulitzer Prize. But all along the way, he gives credit and thanks to his mother for her love and sacrafice. ( )

I'm always interested in reading about Southern childhoods. I am a child of the South, and the Southern experience is ground down into my bones.

Rick Bragg's story of his Southern childhood is both beautiful and sad, and I'm proud to say that he showed the quiet strength and dignity of our poor that the rest of the world never seems to see. You can focus on our loud-mouthed, bigoted rednecks on television easily. However, there are people here that lead dirty, hard-scrabble lives but have more dignity and are owed more respect than the Queen of England. Rick Bragg brings that into focus with his mother's story. He honors his mother by telling the world of her inner-strength and self-sacrifices. He lays bare her failed marriage and her bleak poverty and shame to get to the marrow of just how extraordinary and unordinary his mother is.

I loved this book because I felt like I've met these people before. Not in actuality, of course, but I've known people like them. It puts everything into perspective, that though my people have been made fun of for their accents and their backwoods ways, there's more to us than meets the eye. ( )

This is one of the best well-written books I've read in a long time. His powerful story of a ragged, poverty-filled childhood with an abusive, neglectful, alcoholic father is very compellingly told.

Bragg's focus is on his strong and yet victimized mother. The only nagging thing that bothered me is Bragg's adulation of his mother to the point that he neglects the fact that she bears some responsibility for continually going back to the loser and exposing the kids to the financial and emotional depravation that occurred.

I will read his other books because the writing is so crisp and clean. ( )