Given to Matthew Hayes - 05/11/2023

I do like Rich Bragg and have read many of his books, but as I read this one it seemed like I'd read it before. Maybe he used some of the stories over, or they were similar, not necessarily a bad thing, I just was looking for something I hadn't read. I do enjoy these stories though, and if you haven't read it before, I suggest this one too.. ( )

Woo hoo! My first non-fiction book of the year. This is a book my 94-yo mother had asked me to buy for her several years ago. She enjoyed reading his articles at the back of her Southern Living magazine.

I enjoyed all the essays...that I read. I skipped the ones about football.

His essays made me so hungry for Southern food and I am surrounded by it here in Arkansas, but unfortunately, I started reading this during an ice storm and our driveway is still frozen so I have to eat my own quasi-southern cooking. Aka pork chops tossed in a crockpot with a can of Golden Mushroom Soup.

I've never been to Alabama or Louisiana, which are his homes, but now I'm dying to jump in the car to go in search of the perfect grouper sandwich and to see the roses of Fairhope. ( )

I am a huge fan of Rick Bragg and thoroughly enjoyed My Southern Journey. It's a compilation of various essays he has written through the years for various publications, i.e., magazines Southern Living, Sports Illustrated, GQ, ESPN The Magazine, Best Life, Long Leaf Style, Garden & Gun, Smithsonian, Louisiana Kitchen, and Bon Appetit. Some of the essays had no byline so I assume they were written for this book.

If you are not familiar with Rich Bragg, he was born and raised in Alabama. He lovingly writes about all aspects of being a Southerner not only in this collection, but in his novels as well. I must mention his sense of humor since I often laugh out loud. He also writes with emotion when it comes to his beloved family. Small-town life is the basis for much of his writing but in this book he travels around various parts of the South, i.e., Cajun country, the Gulf Coast, and his native Alabama . The book is divided into five subjects: Home, Table, Place, Craft and Spirit.

The college football essays lost me in parts but college football is a "religion" in the South so, of course, a couple of essays on it had to be included. I thoroughly enjoyed his candor about community, food, fishing, holiday traditions, feeling like an outsider while teaching in the North, romance and break-ups. If reading these essays doesn't give you a connection with the South, nothing will. ( )

"I had two bachelor great-uncles who loafered a lifetime, from Tampa to Chattanooga, high-stepping alongside an accelerating freight train, a guitar case in one hand as they reached, reached for freedom with the fingers of the other. My great-uncle Fred reappeared just before his death in a college bar in Jacksonville, Alabama, dressed in a checked sport coat and brown and white wingtip shoes. He finished a beer, took a roll of money off some college boys at the pool table, and disappeared forever into the night. It may be he never left very deep footprints in the sands of this society, but by God he left a lot of them." ( )