Why Beulah Shot Her Pistol Inside the Baptist Church by Clayton Sullivan

From the Book Jacket:Raised in the Primitive Baptist Church, teenage Beulah Buchanan marries the much older deacon Ralph Rainey to escape from her oppressive parents, thus jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Over the next six years, Beulah works in her domineering husband’s cafe and cooks him dinner at home every night, dutifully attends church, and lets herself be led into an affair with the preacher. When she embarrasses her husband by not cooking enough food for the ravenous visiting revival preacher, Ralph “chastises” Beulah with his belt. When he tries to beat her again, she fights back and locks him in the cooler at his cafe.
Why Beulah Shot Her Pistol Inside the Baptist Church is a new take on the Southern Gothic tragedy, told in Beulah’s innocently hilarious voice. Beulah evokes the Southern women of Clyde Edgerton’s Raney and Mark Childress’s Crazy in Alabama, but is a totally original and winning character, a young woman breaking free.

Quote from the book: By five o'clock I was back in the kitchen cookin' full speed ahead. I was cookin' like I was Betty Crocker. I knew the preachers would turn up at the house at six o'clock.

My thoughts: The title of this book made me laugh so I checked the blurb and bought it. I've chosen to read more than one book just because of the title. I was prepared to like this book and was looking forward to reading it, I wanted to know just WHY did Beulah even have a pistol at the Baptist church. I really do like reading southern literature.

Beulah tells her story in first person to the reader. At times she is funny, sometimes darkly so. She tells the story of her life in rural Mississippi, marriage to an older man, domestic violence, and hypocrisy in her church. She was a sympathetic character, a 16 year old in a loveless marriage being used and abused. She should have listened to her mother. Her life with Ralph was nothing but misery as her mother had predicted. For six years Beulah works for and serves her cold hypocrite of a husband. Then the preacher starts calling, after Ralph is gone to work. He cons her as surly as Ralph did with the sweet words she craves. It breaks her heart to finally learn this.

Since she was raised in the church, and the author is a retired minister, I did not expect her language to be so very crude. Yikes. It was way out of character for an overprotected church girl. The constant repetition, (Beulah kept saying the same thing 3 or 4 different ways) was annoying. It was strange that she could repeat the F word and the P word without hesitation them apologize for saying hell. Go figure.

I don't know whether to recommend this or not. I liked the story but the language really put me off.

Hardcover: 238 pages
Publisher: NewSouth (October 30, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1588381676
ISBN-13: 978-1588381675

Bless Your Heart, Tramp by Celia Rivenbark

About the book:From the wickedly hilarious pen of Southern humorist Celia Rivenbark comes a collection of essays that brings to mind Dave Barry (in high heels) or Jeff Foxworthy (in a prom dress).

Step into the wacky world of “womanless wedding” fund-raisers, in which Bubbas wear boas. Meet two sisters who fight rural boredom by washing Budweiser cans and cutting them into pieces to make clothing. Learn why the word snow sends any right-thinking Southerner careening to the Food Lion for extra loaves of bread and little else.

Humor columnist and slightly crazed belle-by-birth Celia Rivenbark tackles these and other lard-laden subjects in Bless Your Heart, Tramp, a hilarious look at Southern---and just plain human---foibles, up-close and personal.
So pour yourself a glass of sweet tea and curl up on the pie-azza with Bless Your Heart, Tramp.

Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (May 30, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312343426

About the author: Celia Rivenbark is the bestselling author of We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier. She writes a weekly column called “From the Belle Tower” for Myrtle Beach’s Sun News and lives in North Carolina with her husband and daughter.

My Thoughts: I chose to read this book for the Southern Reading Challenge. Even better, I'm already familiar with the author's work. This is the third one of Mama Celia's collections I've read and it was a hoot. If you were raised in the South you will be able to relate to and laugh at many of the situations Celia writes about. If you weren't raised in the South you'll laugh anyway. This collection of essays, while generally rib tickling funny, contained one touching chapter called Carlos and Ruby about an elderly couple who were always together and died of natural causes on the same day. It was written sweetly, helping you picture this lovely couple. I would like to know the story behind this essay.

Do yourself a favor, read this book. I'm off to the kitchen to make a pitcher of sweet tea.

non-fiction, essays, southern humor, humor

Southern Reading Haiku Contest

It is tine for the Southern Haiku Contest for the Southern Reading Challenge at Maggie Reads. Contest ends July 31, 2009. The rules can be seen at here.

Here is my entry. Can you guess what book?

60s in the south
Stories, written and published
The truth will be known

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

From the Book: Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1 edition (February 10, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0399155341
ISBN-13: 978-0399155345

My Thoughts: This is my first book for the Southern Reading Challenge. It was a wonderful start. This compelling story is told by the three main characters in alternate chapters. The characters were well rounded out, I enjoyed getting to know them. The story was not only about race relations during the '60s Civil Rights Movement. It is also about relationships among women and other issues important to women: physical abuse, family, education and more. These women are very real. The snootiness of the more affluent women extended not only to the Help but to anyone they don't deem acceptable. I hated to see it end. I feel readers who didn't grow up during this time period should read it to gain perspective of life today. Hopefully there will be a sequel, I would love to see where Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minnie go.

The author's website.
The Help in the NY Times and in Entertainment Weekly.

Challenges:
Southern Reanding Challenge
100+ Reading Challenge
RYOB Challenge

Civil Rights, domestic help, southern literature

Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

In 1950's Kentucky Icy Sparks turns ten years old. At this time she feels the first of her "urges." They build until they have to come out then she runs to the root cellar. There she croaks, twists her body, pops her eyes and screams. She has no idea what is happening to her. The episodes escalate until she is cursing, croaking, eye popping and screaming at school. In an effort to help her she is sent to a mental hospital. Icy's journey through this difficult disorder is at times funny and sad. She does not find out what is causing these symptoms until she is 18 years old. Tourette Syndrome is not mentioned until the Epilogue.

I don't usually cry at movies or while reading books but a couple of places in this book brought tears to my eyes.

3 1/2