Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Haymarket) [Hardcover]

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (Author), Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz (Author)

Book Description

Series: Haymarket | Publication Date: June 1997

This is a rendering of the author's childhood in rural Oklahoma, from the Dust Bowl days to the end of the Eisenhower era. Writer and journalist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz bears witness to a family and community which still clings to the dream America as a republic of landowners. Drawing deeply on the stories, often biblical parables, she heard in her early years, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz brings to life one of the least understood groups in US history: poor rural whites. They are the backbone of the national campaigns against abortion and for prayer in school. They are also soldiers of the militia movement and the members of a group who will come to trial this spring for the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The book takes readers into the minds of these people, showing their sense of loss and their battered by still-clung-to faith. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is the author of "Roots of Resistance: Land Tenure in New Mexico", "The Great Sioux Nation" and "Indians of the Americas".

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Now a professor of ethnic studies in California, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz turns her eye back to her own roots as a "Dust Bowl Baby" in rural Oklahoma. In telling the story of her family and their hardships in the Depression, Dunbar-Ortiz introduces the reader to some fascinating characters who are certainly not the "white trash" caricatures of popular belief. Interspersed well with her own story are historical facts that give depth to the narrative and correct popular misconceptions about "Okies" (some of which were popularized by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath).

Review

Dunbar-Ortiz's most important achievement is to put class back on the rural map where it belongs. -- Los Angeles Times

With all its passion and pain, this is a fascinating snapshot of rural American life. -- Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Verso; First Edition edition (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859848567
• ISBN-13: 978-1859848562
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,099,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dunbar-Ortiz has produced an American classic in biography., May 7, 1999

By 

Ron Roberts ([e-mail]) (Cedar Falls, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Haymarket) (Hardcover)

With the publication of Red Dirt Dunbar-Ortiz has made a major contribution to American biography. She has managed to write a Steinbeckian account of her childhood and youth in Oklahoma in the 1950s. The humanity and oppression of poor white people is writ large here. Red Dirt is informed by a feminist and class analysis but with great grace and touching honesty. like Meridel LeSueur's novels of 60 years ago, Dunbar-Ortiz shows the quotidian lives of working people who are ignored or riduculed by the outside world. The book is clear eyed and rich in detail. I used the book as a required text in a Sex and Gender course and it was a great hit among my students.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars history and struggles of the frontier settler class, August 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Haymarket) (Hardcover)

...
The best of autobiographical works are those that convey, in the telling of one life story, larger truths than those we experience as individuals. To accomplish this feat with seeming effortlessness, as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has done with Red Dirt, is to create not only a valuable historical record, but a literary work that is a pleasure to read. Employing the finest storytelling skills, Dunbar-Ortiz lovingly recollects her youth in Oklahoma and the family dynamics she experienced "growing up Okie" during the mid-20th-century. In the process, she touches upon a host of social issues--among them racism, sexism, and economic disparity--that have plagued the U.S. since its earliest days. Perhaps most importantly, she offers one resounding voice from among a vast population--namely, the white underclass--that consistently has been underrepresented in historical texts, and misrepresented in popular culture. Exploding the notion of 'poor white trash,' Dunbar-Ortiz offers three-dimensional alternative as she reconstructs through her personal memoir the history and struggles of the frontier settler class and its descendants. As we move into the next century, Red Dirt is a text of vital significance to our collective humanity

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read, June 25, 2000

By 

Mr. Burns "In The Spirit of Ned Christie" (Oklahoma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Haymarket) (Hardcover)

I love this book. A book written about my home state with honesty and clarity of what it means to be Okie. Class struggles, hard working people, historic pain and abuse and the eventual dementia of a woman struggling with her suppressed indianess. Keep the spirit of the Wobblies alive!