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|title=Redbirds

|author=Rick Bragg

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|pages=352

|publisher=The Harvill Press

|date=May 1999

|isbn=1860463975

}}

Rick Bragg was born in the deep South of the United States, in Alabama. His father was a violent, hard-drinking man who regularly beat his wife; once as a small child, Bragg saw his mother tip away his fathers 'likker' and watched when his father returned and she simply stood there, took off her glasses and said, "Don't hurt my teeth." His mother was a determined, strong-willed, loving woman, who spent her entire life struggling to protect her sons from their father, the effects of poverty and the ignorance that had so constricted her own life and marriage. After years of abuse his father finally abandoned his wife and children when Bragg was only six. His mother moved the family to live with her parents where she struggled to scratch a living picking cotton and taking in washing so that her children could live just a little above the poverty line. She went without a new dress for almost twenty years. Sometimes they needed money so badly that she and her sons went trawling the garbage heaps for bottles to return for a cent or two. They were not alone, but it must have been so hard for an honest, proud woman and it's heartbreaking to read:

Rick Bragg's writing isn't the greatest literary achievement ever, enthusiastic and generous reader though I am, even I cringed a little at some of the rather obvious images he uses from time to time. This is journalese, but it's good journalese because it's so honest and also because the unmistakenly Southern way of using language makes for a relaxed, easy read. I think Rick Bragg has a pretty good handle on the big picture himself, he can see the good and the bad in the world, in other people, and especially in himself and while he's sad about the bad parts he's rueful, rather than harsh and condemning. He sounds like a nice man to me. He's written a book about himself and his family, it's interesting to me especially for that, but he's also written about a dirt-poor upbringing in the deep South in a way which will add to anyone's understanding of the wider social situation at that time - while many black Americans have told their stories, and rightly so, the disparagingly named 'white trash' people have produced far fewer testimonies. He's also written about an eventful career in journalism covering some of the most distressing news stories of recent times.

"If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget her, eyes closed, lips moving in prayer, both hands pressed to the warm plastic top of the black-and-white television. On the screen was a young Oral Roberts in shades of grey, assuring my momma that God was close, that she could feel Him if her faith was strong enough, coursing through that second hand Zenith... All you had to do was reach out and feel the screen, feel that warmth, that electricity, and be Saved. I reached out to touch it myself once or twice, but all I felt was the hot glow of the picture tube."

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