Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South [Paperback]

Shirley Abbott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1998

In a rich blend of memoir and meditation, Abbott focuses her graceful and witty attention on mothers and daughters of the South. Theirs is a world of red dirt and backbreaking chores and roof-raising revival meeting--a far cry from the magnolias and mint juleps of Gone with the Wind.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An illuminating book, regardless of where we were born." Boston Globe

"Wonderful and important." - Pat Conroy

"Charmingly written." People Magazine

About the Author

Shirley Abbott is the author of Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South and The Bookmaker's Daughter: A Memory Unbound, which was a New York Times Notable Book. Born and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas, she now lives in New York and Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 30, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395901448
• ISBN-13: 978-0395901441
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #404,158 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 Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South, January 7, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (Hardcover)

Any Southern woman who has ever been tempted to transmogrify her prolific, feisty, cow-milking, chicken-plucking, garden-producing grandmothers into delicate, helpless ladies of the manor should read this book first. For in it, Shirley Abbott looks straight in the faces of the proud, independent, and powerful female descendants of the Scots-Irish migration to the Southern states and discovers something far more admirable than the Southern Belle.

In the process, she challenges such old-line interpretations of southern experience as that of W.J. Cash, who claimed the poor Scots-Irish immigrants who stepped off crowded ships at Charleston and Philadelphia fled inland in search of land that would permit them to become part of the English-American slave-holding, plantation-owning power structure of the Southern colonies. Nothing could be farther from the truth, Abbott argues convincingly: their experience had instilled in the Scots-Irish an abiding hatred of all things English, including the political and economic institutions the English established in centers like Charleston. These new immigrants preferred the terrifying, unexplored baclwoods, where they were free of English domination and what they conceived to be English decadence. The pioneer experience, reinforced by continuing poverty, a civil war, and the depredations of a occupying army only reinforced the pride and self-confidence these people brought with them to America.

In a well conceived study driven by her desire to place and understand her own poor, white, rural, and proud forebears, Abbott produces an elegant combination of memoir and cultural history. Her crystalline two-page account of the Scots-Irish trail to America is in itself worth the price of the book. And the memorable descriptions of the homes, tables, and characters of her Arkansas kinspeople demonstrate the consequences of that migration. For anyone wishing to understand Southern culture and southern women in particular, this small volume is a must-read. It takes the reader beyond stereotypes to a realistic picture of people whose lives are far more inspiring than that of any Belle, Sweet Potato Queen, or YaYa. I have spent my lifetime in the South and in the study of its literature and culture. Yet, I came away from this book with a deeper undersanding of the region and my own personal history in it.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book helps me know myself and my family., August 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (Hardcover)

I like to read this book once a year to remind me who I am and where I came from. I will never again be critical or ashamed of my rural mothers'and grandmothers' ways. I always feel like crying after I read this book--tears for their toil and for the disrespect society dealt them, but mostly, I cry a little for myself, too. I regret that I can't sit with them all around the table and hear their stories anymore, and I wish I could pile in the car like Shirley and her cousin to ride out to the cemetary to tend the graves. Abbott's story was familiar to me from the first page. I appreciate the opportunity to remember my maternal ancestors--the poor, white, uneducated, transient,hard working women of the south

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Part Memoir, Part History, May 31, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (Paperback)

Shirley Abbott has truly captured the southern female experience, both past and present. Her vivid descriptions of her own family and her mother are the best parts of this book. The historical accounts of women from antebellum times to present are interesting, though not quite as engrossing as her own recollections. It is impossible not to regret the passing of an era in the south as one reads this book and realizes the complexities of women who were so often deemed simple hillbillies. Many women, like myself, who grew up in small southerns towns will recognize their own experiences as they follow the author's. I know I did. On occasion, Ms. Abbott wanders off into feminist interpretations that could get a little harsh. I didn't agree with all of her conclusions, but I really enjoyed reading this book.