The bootlegger's other daughter / Mary Cimarolli.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cimarolli, Mary, 1931-

Series:

Sam Rayburn series on rural life ; no. 4.

Sam Rayburn series on rural life ; no. 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cimarolli, Mary, 1931---Childhood and youth.

Cimarolli, Mary.

Cimarolli, Mary, 1931-.

Manners and customs.

Texas, East--Social life and customs.

Texas, East.

Texas, East--Biography.

East Texas.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 170 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

College Station : Texas A&M University Press, [2003]

Summary:

The generation that toiled through the Great Depression and won the Second World War has become known as "the greatest generation." But not all of them qualified for that exaggerated epithet in the eyes of their own children. In this tender but unsparing memoir, Mary Cimarolli remembers a world in which the family home was lost to foreclosure, her father made his way by bootlegging, and school was a haven in which to hide from her brother's teasing. Her stories are about struggle and survival, making do and overcoming, and, ultimately, reconciliation.

From her perspective as a child, she describes the cotton stamps and other programs of the New Deal, the yellow-dog Democrat politics and racism of East Texas, and the religious revivals and Old Settlers reunions that gave a break from working in the cotton patch. The colorful colloquialisms of rural East Texas that dot the manuscript help express both the traditionalism of the region and its changes under the impact of modernization, electrification, and the coming of war. Along with these regional and national trends, Cimarolli skillfully interweaves the personal: conflict between her parents, the death of her brother a few days before his sixteenth birthday, and her own inner tensions.

Contents:

Making Sense of My Senses 5

End of the Beginning 19

On Our Own 21

Through the Eyes of a Bootlegger's Daughter 35

Witnesses to the End of the Nineteenth Century 40

Witnesses to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 53

Living in a Wagon Shed 64

Guilt by Association 69

A Safe Haven 72

A Trilogy of Diversions 78

Cotton Stamps, Socks, and Self-Respect 92

Yellow Dogs, Politics, and Racism 98

"Risins" and "Rheumatiz" 104

Daddy Leaves Home to Pick Cotton Out West 109

The Smell of Modernization 114

Murder or Accident? 117

Sounds of War 120

Of Sugar, Shoes, and Other Wartime Shortages 128

Puberty and War 134

Death Comes to Our House 139

An Alien in My Own Country 144

Conflicts of the Heart 150

Leaving East Texas 158.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

1585442607

OCLC:

51216241