"On the short drive to the preschool, I dutifully unwrap a NutriGrain bar and toss it into the back seat to my four-year-old. Sometimes I'll even unwrap one for myself. Studies have shown that it's very important for familes to eat together. . . . "
Why couldn't the Sopranos survive living down South? Simple. You can't shoot a guy full of holes after eating chicken and pastry, spoon bread, okra, and tomatoes.
What does a Southern woman consider grounds for divorce? When Daddy takes the kids out in public dressed in pajama tops and Tweety Bird swim socks. Again.
What is the Southern woman's opinion of a new "fat virus" theory? Bring it on! We've got a lot of skinny friends we need to sneeze on.
Want to become honest-to-Jesus white trash? Spend two weeks' salary on hair extensions and pancake makeup for your three-year-old so she can win a five-dollar trophy in the Wee Tiny Miss pageant and the adoration of, well, nobody much.
What does the Southern woman think of Paul McCartney's marriage to a model thirty years younger? We're not surprised. Statistically speaking, it's almost impossible for billionaires to discover that their soulmates are fifty-five and restocking the shampoo end caps at Kmart.
In this wickedly funny follow-up to her bestselling Bless Your Heart, Tramp, Celia Rivenbark welcomes you, once again, to the south she loves, the land of "Mama and them's," "precious and dahlin," and mommies who mow. Ya'll come back now, you hear.
After winning Southern women's hearts with her SEBA bestseller Bless Your Heart, Tramp in 2000, Rivenbark has penned a new-and equally sidesplitting-collection of essays, offering Northern and Southern sisters alike a woman's "take on those irksome little yuks in daily life." Although she warns certain readers (Yankees, namely) that they may need a Southern lexicon to decipher her folksy, down-home prose style, Rivenbark's focus on familiar topics like family, relationships and child rearing should appeal to most females, regardless of geography or age. Marked by a feisty, sarcastic tone and tempered with plenty of cries of "yoo hoo" and "Well, shit," even chapter titles (e.g., "Stop Watching Your Plasma TV and Start Selling Your Plasma: How to Become Honest-to-Jesus White Trash" and "Here Comes the Bride: Let's Just Get 'Em Hitched Sometime Before We See the Head") don't escape the author's wry humor. The most mundane situations become laugh-out-loud scenarios. When, for example, Rivenbark is confronted by the "Pre-School Nazis" and intimidating "granola moms" at her four-year-old's school, she admits asking her daughter to lie about what she had for breakfast (a foil-wrapped breakfast bar instead of the required "scrambled eggs, a bowl of real oatmeal-the kind you have to cook on top of the, uh, you know, stove-two slices of whole wheat toast and a glass of soy milk"). Rivenbark is a hoot, and her book will be best enjoyed while listening to the Allman Brothers Band and eating "a plate of, what else? collards and cornbread." Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"I loved Celia's book; it made me want to get myself a doublewide, head on down to Mama and them's, and start mowing my own lawn. I never knew that Southern folk had time set aside from cooking the best food in the world to grow such marvelous senses of humor. For a Yankee like me, Southern life has always been fascinating, but who knew it was so pants-wetting funny (like watching a hillbilly bang his head repeatedly on the door of the outhouse, because I've seen that, you know)? And there's also the mention of 'making doody,' which is always a shoo-in for me. Celia's book rocks; everyone is going to love it.
P.S.: How much prettier is she than me?"--Laurie Notaro, author of The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club
"When the aliens come to study us, I hope they find Celia Rivenbark's work prominently displayed. She is one of our greatest domestic anthropologists, digging up and airing all those things we like to think others don't know. In other words, the truth. She knows the South and she knows women, but that's just the tip of it all. I think she might very well know everything. I don't know when I have laughed so loud and so long. I am forever a devoted fan."--Jill McCorkle, author of Creatures of Habit
"Celia Rivenbark's collection of essays, We're Just Like You, Only Prettier, is a must-read for anybody who wants a funny, no-holds-barred look at today's South, from white trash in all its glorious permutations, to Yuppiedom."--Haywood Smith, author of The Red Hat Club
"I laughed so hard reading this book, I began snorting in an unbecoming fashion. I loved it nonetheless. I'll be sending copies to everyone, especially my baby's daddy."--Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy
"I thought I was Southern until I read Celia Rivenbark's book. . . . What a funny, smart, and irreverent writer she is!"--Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls
Celia Rivenbark was born and raised in Duplin County, NC, which had the distinction of being the nation's number 1 producer of hogs and turkeys during a brief, magical moment in the early 1980s.
Celia grew up in a small house in the country with a red barn out back that was populated by a couple of dozen lanky and unvaccinated cats. Her grandparents' house, just across the ditch, had the first indoor plumbing in Teachey, NC and family lore swears that people came from miles around just to watch the toilet flush.
Despite this proud plumbing tradition, Celia grew up without a washer and dryer. On every Sunday afternoon of her childhood, while her mama rested up from preparing a fried chicken and sweet potato casserole lunch, she, her sister and her daddy rode to the laundromat two miles away to do the weekly wash.
It was at this laundromat, where a carefully lettered sign reminded customers that management was "NOT RESONSIBLE" for lost items, that Celia shirked "resonsibility" her own self and snuck away to read the big, fat Sunday News & Observer out of Raleigh, NC. By age 7, she'd decided to be a newspaper reporter.
Late nights, she'd listen to the feed trucks rattle by on the highway and she'd go to sleep wondering what exotic cities those noisy trucks would be in by morning (Richmond? Atlanta? Charlotte?) Their headlights crawling across the walls of her little pink bedroom at the edge of a soybean field were like constellations pointing the way to a bigger life, a better place, a place where there wasn't so much turkey shit everywhere.
After a couple of years of college, Celia went to work for her hometown paper, the Wallace, NC Enterprise. The locals loved to say, as they renewed their "perscriptions," that "you can eat a pot of rice and read the Enterprise and go to bed with nothing on your stomach and nothing on your mind."
Mebbe. But Celia loved the Enterprise. Where else could you cover a dead body being hauled out of the river (alcohol was once again a contributing factor) in the morning and then write up weddings in the afternoon?
After eight years, however, taking front-page photos of the publisher shaking hands with other fez-wearing Shriners and tomatoes shaped like male "ginny-talia" was losing its appeal.
Celia went to work for the Wilmington, NC Morning Star after a savvy features editor was charmed by a lead paragraph in an Enterprise story about the rare birth of a mule: "Her mother was a nag and her father was a jackass."
The Morning Star was no News and Observer but it came out every day and Celia got to write weddings for 55,000 readers instead of 3,500, plus she got a paycheck every two weeks with that nifty New York Times logo on it.
After an unfortunate stint as a copy editor--her a*s expanded to a good six ax handles across--Celia started writing a weekly humor column that fulfilled her lifelong dream of being paid to be a smart a*s. Along the way, she won a bunch of press awards, including a national health journalism award--hilarious when you consider she's never met a steamed vegetable she could keep down.
Having met and married a cute guy in sports, Celia found herself happily knocked up at age 40 and, after 21 years, she quit newspapering to stay home with her new baby girl.
After a year or so, she started using Sophie's two-hour naps to write a humor column from the mommie front lines for the Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The column continues to run weekly and is syndicated by the McClatchy-Tribune News Services.
In 2000, Coastal Carolina Press published a collection of Celia's columns. A Southeast Book Sellers Association best-seller, Bless Your Heart, Tramp was nominated for the James Thurber Prize in 2001. David Sedaris won. He wins everything.
Her second book, We're Just Like You, Only Prettier, published by St. Martin's Press, was the winner of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Nonfiction Book of the Year and was a finalist for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor. Jon Stewart won. He and David Sedaris probably went out drinking afterwards. I'm sorry, did that sound bitter?
Celia lives in Wilmington, NC, with her husband, Scott, Director of Government Relations for New Hanover Health Network and author of the true-crime bestseller, Innocent Victims. Their daughter, Sophie, attends elementary school where she grudgingly wears a very uncool uniform. When she isn't writing books, magazine articles or speeches, Celia enjoys watching old episodes of "The Gilmore Girls" while eating anything from Taco Bell.
She reports that the proudest day of her life was the one in which the Sears truck showed up to deliver a matching washer and dryer and neither one of 'em had to go on the front porch.
This review is from: We're Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle (Hardcover)
I was laughing out loud all over several airports as I read this book. It IS funny, but much more crass and much more derogative of other people than I expected. I was briefly allowed the privilege of living in the South and bought this book as my celebration and induction into the southern belle club. Very true to life, a belly-aching laugh of a read, but you have to be prepared to filter out some profanity, etc. I probably wouldn't buy it again and only gave it to my sister to read because she knows me well enough to know my character. Decide for yourself what you want to take in, and what you don't. 3-star rating is because of the items mentioned above - otherwise it would get a 4.
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I am a victim of Hurricane Katrina. Just before the storm, I bought this book because I am huge fan of southern lit. After the storm, our house was fine but we were out of power for a couple weeks. One of the highlights of the storm was sitting around and passing this book and taking turns reading excerpts to everyone. With so much destruction and devastation around us, it was nice to laugh till we cried, instead of just crying. The men laughed just as hard as we did at a "girl book" We read the book and looked forward to better days.
KS Hattiesburg, MS
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsI laughed so hard it made me cry!, March 21, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: We're Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle (Hardcover)
I've never read a book in a weekend. Ever. But, I couldn't put this book down! Born and raised in Richmond, VA (which any true Southerner will tell you, is much further south than Atlanta, GA), I completely relate to Celia Rivenbark's rants about Mommy Wars, southern life, and mullets. Unfortunately, I'm just not elequent enough to describe how wonderful this book is. Celia, if you read this, you've gained a loyal fan, and I plan on spreading the word about this book around the office tomorrow... after the painful, but inevitable, staff meeting.
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