All over but the Shoutin

All Over but the Shoutin’

All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg is an autobiography that starts from Mr. Bragg's impoverished childhood in a family that included an abusive, alcoholic father, an incredibly powerful angel of a mother and his two brothers, and follows him through his Pulitzer Prize-winning journalistic career at the New York Times. The author states at the beginning of the book that readers will laugh and cry reading it. He was right on the money with both of these points.

The Bragg family grew up with virtually nothing. The father left the family a number of times, offering no financial assistance and stealing whatever he could before he left. When he was there, he was usually drunk and physically abusive to the mother. He rarely went after the children, but when he did the mother was always there to offer protection. Mr. Bragg's mother's life consisted of working herself to exhaustion and using whatever money she had on the children.

The second half of the book follows Mr. Bragg's developing career and family. Mr. Bragg covered various events like the Miami riots, the Haitian atrocities, and the Susan Smith case among others for his job.

I have only read four books my entire life for school, but this is one is the best I have read. There were numerous things that I learned from the book. The one that hit me the hardest was it's hard to see people living in shame because they can cover it up really well, almost like it doesn’t bother them at all. I grew up in a middle class family and simply didn't understand what it meant to be so broke that you are ashamed to be around people who have money. The thought never crossed my mind, ever.

I bet it wouldn't take much effort for me to identify a time in my life when I was cruel towards people who were poor; critically judging them. Especially not knowing what their situation was. They could have had family or financial problems, maybe their house just burnt down. It could have been a number of things but any way you look at it, it was wrong.

There were many parts of the book that had me hooked; I couldn’t stop reading no matter what was going on. One part of the book that had me emotionally involved was when Mr. Bragg won the Pulitzer Prize; he wanted his mom to come to the event. She was initially too scared to go because she was ashamed to be in front of all of the rich people, “I told her that we should travel to New York to accept the prize, but she just said, no, she couldn’t do that, she could never do anything like that…It was the people she couldn’t face, all those fancy people” (Bragg 299). It took many tries to coax her to go, but she finally accepted.

I know if that situation would have arisen in my house growing up, my mother and father would do everything in their power to make it to the event. The only thing that would have stopped them was if they were in the hospital. But knowing them they would try everything possible to get out of there for a day or two to see it.

One of the major ideas in this book deals with culture. First off culture is defined as: the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc. Reading this book as someone not from the south is very hard at first. When I first started reading it seemed that Bragg wrote as if everyone who reads the book understands first hand what poor people went through during that time frame. I only know what I know about these topics from what learned in history class, which wasn’t very much. There was just not enough time in the school year to go in depth to all the specific stories that he and others went through. There could be a class for a whole semester that deals with what he went through, the curriculum just wouldn’t allow it.

After reading the book though I think Bragg did a very good job communicating in the book. He gave just enough background information on the stories he was telling to make you want more. He didn’t give so much information it became boring, and made us want to just skip that part and move on to the next chapter.

As I said before, I grew up in a middle class family. This made it difficult for me to completely understand everything that he was talking about in the book. I never knew what it was like to have little or no food to eat. If we didn’t have anything to eat our family would go to a restaurant and eat or go shopping and get food.

Also, the work aspect is difficult to understand for me. I know what his mother did was what all people in her situation did then. The working conditions that she dealt with day in and day out were horrific. And the thing was she never complained about it