I finished. Finally. This book I started reading during a cold February visit with my son to our local skate park is finally over for me.
I don't know why it has taken this long to finish. It is, after all, my favorite genre: memoir. It is well-written. It even has the underdog makes good storyline that draws me to it. It's not the words, the writing, it's me I suppose. Life happens at times in waves that are quite consuming. Such has been my life these past months. Something had to give. Generally, when that happens, it's the reader that has to go.
Slowly, I've been able to pick it back up and make my way through Rick Bragg's autobiography, "All Over but the Shoutin'". Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times weaves a story that is rich and well-told. It is his story. And it is beautiful.
Bragg was raised in deep south Alabama during the 60's and 70's. He and his brothers (one older and one younger) are raised by a single Mother after their alcoholic father left them, again. This woman went without new clothes, food, and even teeth. She worked the cotton fields and ironed and folded laundry all day so that her children wouldn't be raised on nothing. She gave all she had and then some to help provide for her boys.
One reviewer writes:
"All Over But the Shoutin’ is a book that, on every page, reminds you of someone you know and love—or at the very least, somebody you heard about at the dinner table. Rick Bragg may be telling the story of his momma and his brothers and his daddy and his grandmother, but it’s a story you’ll swear you have heard before. It’s just that Rick Bragg tells it so much better...
Over his career, Bragg has written about sports for his local newspaper, first-hand accounts of the Susan Smith trial, and war stories from Haiti, to name a few. Interwoven into a mosaic of world news, Op Ed pieces and true confessions is his family’s personal history. Rick Bragg’s people become yours, and All Over But the Shoutin’ becomes a book you don’t dare put down.
Bragg claims to have written this book for his mother and for all the other dirt-poor people whose stories won’t ever be written and might not be remembered. But I suspect those of us with roots in the South will read it and remember a grandmother like his who listened to fiddle music on the radio or a brother who rode a motorcycle barefooted and fast....
At the end of the book, when Bragg’s paid cash for a new house for his mother and remembered the times his grandmother comforted him in the dark of the night, you know All Over But the Shoutin’ is the kind of book you won’t soon forget. You’ll want to tell your friends about it and ask your grandmother for family stories.
Then you’ll wish you had Rick Bragg to write it all down."
Over his career, Bragg has written about sports for his local newspaper, first-hand accounts of the Susan Smith trial, and war stories from Haiti, to name a few. Interwoven into a mosaic of world news, Op Ed pieces and true confessions is his family’s personal history. Rick Bragg’s people become yours, and All Over But the Shoutin’ becomes a book you don’t dare put down.
Bragg claims to have written this book for his mother and for all the other dirt-poor people whose stories won’t ever be written and might not be remembered. But I suspect those of us with roots in the South will read it and remember a grandmother like his who listened to fiddle music on the radio or a brother who rode a motorcycle barefooted and fast....
At the end of the book, when Bragg’s paid cash for a new house for his mother and remembered the times his grandmother comforted him in the dark of the night, you know All Over But the Shoutin’ is the kind of book you won’t soon forget. You’ll want to tell your friends about it and ask your grandmother for family stories.
Then you’ll wish you had Rick Bragg to write it all down."
As always, I was drawn to the "faith thread" that runs through Bragg's pages. He tells of the faith of his Mother, neighbors, and kinfolk. Bragg wrestles with it, though and makes no bones about it. He's tried to find it and latch on to it at several points in his formative years, yet he remains somewhat unsure about it. He describes the faith of his family:
...Faith is a part of my momma's life, and because my own struggle to understand, to believe, to accept, consumed so much of my childhood. that faith, that believe made the unbearable somehow bearable for her and the loneliness less. I am descended from a people who know there is a God with the same certainty that they know walking into a river will get them wet.
I was also moved by the stories of education (or non-education) in Bragg's memoir. It is very clear that the class system was alive and well in the halls of the schools the boys attended:
The principal and teachers, when they recognized who we were, where we ranked, told Sam [Rick's older brother] that he could sweep the narrow halls, clean the bathrooms and shovel coal into the school's furnace, to earn his free lunch. He took out the trash and burned it and unclogged the toilet. They never bothered to teach him to read very well; he learned that on his own. They never bothered to tell him about the world outside his narrow, limited one. They forgot to show him maps of the universe or share the secrets of history, biology. As other students behind the classroom doors read about empires, wars and kings, he waxed the gymnasium floor.
This breaks my "teacher heart". Especially when I think that this really would have been considered "modern education".
Although it took me months to finish, I suspect that for many this is a "can't-put-it-down" book. Many times in the first half I found myself almost chewing on Bragg's richly crafted sentences. I confess to wondering if he had to write some of it one sentence at a time to build in such rich language and visual images. No matter if he writes and rewrites or if it simply flows out of his pen with such eloquence, this story is a treat for the reader. In an odd sort of way, I'm glad I savored it.
On the LG front...her Mother has surrendered her rights and we will begin the process for adoption very soon. This is a little different than it is in some states. We will maintain contact with her family even as she becomes a part of ours. This means navigating the waters is quite interesting. 
Honestly, though, I think nothing pleases her more than having DS 3 watch her. These two are like two peas in a pod. They think alike. They process alike. They have some of the same quirks and the same sense of humor. It's fun to watch them develop their sibling relationship. Here they are after the recital...
