Where I Come From

July 20, 2020
Despite a generous helping of folksy wit and charm, this compilation of previously published columns from Pulitzer winner Bragg (The Best Cook in the World) amounts to a frustratingly shallow tribute to the South. There are laugh-out-loud moments throughout, as Bragg recounts close encounters with such perils as spicy fried chicken in Nashville, alligators in Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, and a particularly ill-tempered goat. However, Bragg’s jabs at contemporary culture, as a self-described “crotchety relic,” wear thin as the book proceeds. “New country,” he writes, “is as country as a black turtleneck, all hat and no cow,” the phrase for somebody deemed insufficiently rural to don a cowboy hat. Bragg grouses that too many Southerners “anchor themselves with clichés,” but the whole book is a paean to Southern clichés. More damagingly, Bragg makes a half-hearted attempt to account for the hate on display at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.: “I hear that many of the people who marched in Charlottesville were Southern men, but I didn’t know them.” Bragg’s longtime fans will enjoy the piquant one-liners they’ve come to expect, but new readers looking for meaningful insight into the South should look to his previous works.

August 15, 2020
A collection of slice-of-life columns from a celebrated Southern writer. Like skilled comedians, skilled columnists use the vulnerabilities and idiosyncrasies of their lives to tell stories with universal themes. As you learn about their people and their places, you find new ways to look at your own. In this compilation of previously published columns, the vast majority of which appeared in Southern Living and Garden & Gun, Bragg isn't out to convince you of anything. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and popular memoirist just wants you to know what it's like to live in his native South. That means eating sausage gravy in a diner, a po'boy in New Orleans, and hot chicken in Nashville--there's a lot here about food, and Bragg knows how to make just about any dish sound delicious. It also means driving a Chevrolet, going fishing with your brother, beating back fire ants, hearing stories about a sweet departed aunt, and even having close encounters with Jerry Lee Lewis (Bragg wrote the music legend's biography). The most poignant of these short works is a piece on a dog called Skinny, so named "because she was two dogs high and half a dog wide." To be sure, not every piece is as memorable as Skinny's, and a few are flimsy. Among them, the author writes multiple letters to Santa, and you can only go to that well once--if you should have occasion to go there at all. But such contrivances are the exception. On balance, the columns are clever, unassuming, and, most notably, told in a distinctive voice. They do what good columns do: sometimes tug at your heart, sometimes make you laugh to yourself, sometimes both. You read one and then go on with your day with a better sense of what it's like to be from somewhere. A column-per-day prescription for those looking to find a new friend on the page.

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November 1, 2020

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author of eight books, including Ava's Man and All Over but the Shoutin', Southern Living columnist Bragg here offers a collection of 73 previously published vignettes and stories featuring "the South's gentler, easier nature." Most of the pieces center on Clay County, AL, but Bragg ventures out and about when writing about food, especially Gulf Coast po'boys and family-owned diners in New Orleans. Bragg is a self-described "crotchety relic," who shows his softer side in recollections of relatives, friends, meals, and holidays. Memories of time spent with Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides) and a brief encounter with novelist Harper Lee are also featured. Hair permanents that are temporary, wealthy people and their ghosts, cranberry sauce stuck in a can, and, of course, the Southern biscuit, all are examined with humor; however, the problems of driving through, in, and around Atlanta are realistic in their portrayal. VERDICT A notable volume from a widely appreciated author recommended for all humor, journalism, and Southern literature collections.--Joyce Sparrow, Helenwood, TN

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