Rick Bragg is the author of two critically acclaimed and best-selling books, All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man. Apple app store. He also garnered a Pulitzer Prize for j. The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Rick Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin', a haunting memoir about growing up dirt-poor in the deep South, and about struggling to leave the past behind while still deeply tied to it through bonds of love and responsibility. About All Over but the Shoutin’. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year 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.
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…show more content…
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 or quit. I know if I was in her situation I would have never lasted. I would have quit and tried to find another job. Another option that middle class workers have is taking vacation time if it gets to hot out or if it is raining. That is just the way we deal with situations like that. I believe our generation living in those conditions would never have made it back then.
Communication is a very important aspect of any family. Good communication leads to a better family life. Bragg and his mother in particular seemed to communicate very well. The way he details each of his childhood stories is very good and since most of the stories are told by the motherly figure in your life you can see the communication is good. The communication between Bragg and his father is the complete opposite. It was very hard
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…show more content…
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 or quit. I know if I was in her situation I would have never lasted. I would have quit and tried to find another job. Another option that middle class workers have is taking vacation time if it gets to hot out or if it is raining. That is just the way we deal with situations like that. I believe our generation living in those conditions would never have made it back then.
Communication is a very important aspect of any family. Good communication leads to a better family life. Bragg and his mother in particular seemed to communicate very well. The way he details each of his childhood stories is very good and since most of the stories are told by the motherly figure in your life you can see the communication is good. The communication between Bragg and his father is the complete opposite. It was very hard
Rick Bragg All Over But The Shoutin Summary
All Over But Shouting Summary
In the essay, “All Over But the Shoutin’,” Rick Bragg, the author, depicts the painful strain inflicted upon family’s relationship caused by the reckless action of a father to forgo the future of his wife and kids in pursuit of his own selfish ambitions. The author’s use of rhetorical moves such as tone, stance, and imagery effectively portrayed to his audience that, regardless of how debauch a deed may be, there is always room in one’s heart for forgiveness—you just have to be receptive to its backlash. The author’s melancholic, yet, optimistic tone arouses mix feelings from his readers. Bragg clouts his readers’ perception of his father with harrowing, however, coveted recollections of the past. In the author’s comparative recount of the Father’s demeanor, he paints an unsettling, yet a hopeful life of his father:“I thought he would greet me with that strong voice that sounded so fine when he laughed and so evil when, slurred by a quart of corn likker, he whirled through the house and cried and shrieked, tormented by things we could not see or even imagine. I thought he would be the man and monster of my childhood” (Bragg 1).Bragg’s dejected tone when addressing his father’s latest demeanor is satirical as the Father’s past behavior is anything but celebratory. The author’s conscious decision to compare his memories of the Father to that of a “man” and a “monster” depicts the two emotions Bragg intended to invoke from his readers through the use of tone: contentment