Be Specific About Books During Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living
| Original Title: | Mama Makes Up Her Mind: And Other Dangers of Southern Living |
| ISBN: | 0679751602 (ISBN13: 9780679751601) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | Georgia(United States) |
Bailey White
Trade Paperback | Pages: 229 pages Rating: 3.95 | 4185 Users | 372 Reviews
Interpretation In Pursuance Of Books Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living
Whether written (in books such as this) or spoken (in her oral essays on NPR), I love Bailey White's voice. It is honest, original, entertaining and yet carries insight that can be quite biting at times. Better still, it is oh so southern. She is a master storyteller who manages to fit whole stories into the space of a short essay. Aspiring writers should study her opening lines and paragraphs to see how a great writer draws a reader in. How about these for opening sentences? "We should have known things were not going well when Mama found a tick doing isometrics under her panty hose." Or "Something about my mother attracts ornithologists." Or "My mother eats things she finds dead on the road." Or "I remember as a little child watching my aunt Belle's wide rump disappear into the cattails and marsh grass at the edge of a pond as she crawled on her hands and knees to meet a giant alligator face to face." Or, perhaps my favorite, "My Uncle Jimbuddy, the cabinet maker, has been cutting off pieces of his fingers for ten years now." With openings like these, how can a reader not be drawn in to find out what in the world she is talking about and how is she going to make a story of it?Ms. White's stories are so evocative that, by the time you finish reading this slim volume, you feel you're a member of her family, whether you want to be or not, not unlike Kevin, the yankee nephew of Ms. White's aunt Eleanor -- the young man aunt Eleanor wants Ms. White to marry despite the fact that "Kevin has to lie down with with a cold rag on his head after an hour in my company, and . . .I can't seem to breathe normally when I am in the same room with Kevin, and have to go out on the porch and gulp air every ten minutes. . ." You know the dirty laundry, you know the eccentricities, and you know the hurts that are long past but not forgotten, and yet, through all of it you never lose sight of the irony and humor of it all. Moreover, you come to realize that dirty laundry, eccentricities and old hurts are very real parts of all our lives and deserve to be honored and celebrated every bit as much as the things we more typically choose to focus our attentions on.
In short, Ms. White's writing not only entertains, it also informs and uplifts, and I for one am eagerly looking forward to the next time I have the good fortune to pick up one of her books.
List Regarding Books Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living
| Title | : | Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living |
| Author | : | Bailey White |
| Book Format | : | Trade Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 229 pages |
| Published | : | April 12th 1994 by Vintage (first published 1993) |
| Categories | : | Humor. Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir. Short Stories. American. Southern. Writing. Essays |
Rating Regarding Books Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living
Ratings: 3.95 From 4185 Users | 372 ReviewsRate Regarding Books Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living
Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living brings many laughs but with some introspection, too. The book is a collection of vignettes from Bailey White's life, most of which center around "Mama". Mama knows what she wants and how to get it. Mama can be hilarious, charming or set in her ways (but not in a cantankerous way.) The book reads fast and makes for a nice segue between heavier reads or long books.4 starsRe-reading at the laundromat, while recovering from the dishwasher disaster. I was actually inspired to re-read by a passage from another of her books, Sleeping at the Starlite Motel. My disaster story pales compared to hers: MY AUNT ELEANOR WAS TAKING A SHOWER THE other day when the whole bathroom fell right through the floor and landed in the dust under the house. Dripping wet and all lathered up, picking soap and tile grout out of her ears, Aunt Eleanor crawled out of the debris and through
Bailey White takes a wide open view of her relatively quiet existence. But she certainly makes a lot seem to happen when it doesnt seem like anything is happening. Kind of like my life. I want her with me when I go to buy a car. Or visit an antiquarian bookstore.
As a general rule, collections of short stories drive me nuts. This was a book full of 2-3 page vignettes that had no connection to each other besides the fact that the author's mother was in each story and each story happened in the South. It was a bunch of anecdotes told in the way a mother would tell stories of her childhood to her children - which would have been fine if there was a logical flow, or the stories built on each other, but they didn't. I could tell within twenty pages that this
I had forgotten about this one until Sheryl put it up on her "to-read" shelf. I'm going to have to pull it down and read it again. It was passed along to me by a good friend with whom I share a very Southern sense of humor, and so was a huge hit.It's no secret that I adore Southern fiction and non-fiction, and prefer it to any other genre of literature. This charming little book is a prime example of the appeal for me. While this book is not "great literature" by any means, it's very real.
OMG! A friend of mine gave this book to me and said that the 'Mama' in the book reminded her of my mother so I should read it. I read it, then gave it to my mother to read without telling her what my friend had said. My mother read it, called me up and said, "That Bailey White, she reminds me of YOU!" Lordy, it was like looking in the mirror! Bailey White is a delight. I later got the audio version and it is even better to listen to the author's raspy southern accent. Read it!
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