Rick Bragg: All over but the Shoutin'

The author, Rick Bragg, won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996, for his work with The New York Times. Rick Bragg recently spoke in front of Alabama's state legislature. The Gadsden Times reported this: “Remember My People,” was Bragg's topic and even though he spun yarns and told good natured tales, there was an edge to his voice several times as he defined just who his people are and how they can be taken advantage of by the powerful. “I know that lucky people, rich people, comfortable people don't need a lot of help,” said Bragg, whose best selling book “All Over But the Shoutin'” is partly the story of growing up dirt poor — “I come from several generations of poor white trash in northeast Alabama,” he said proudly — and his incredibly strong mother who raised him and his two brothers while married to an abusive, alcoholic father. “But I am not asking you to give my people, working people, anything they don't earn,” he said. “But I believe that every society, every great society really is judged by how it treats its working people and poor. See that Gadsden Time piece here. Rick Bragg also wrote these interesting books: The Most They Ever Had, The Prince of Frogtown (Vintage), Ava's Man, and Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg.