Rick Bragg - The Voice of the South

            If you're from the American south, you may feel that you share a unique bond with other southerners. Traditions, values, speech patterns, and even favorite foods bind them together in a way that "outsiders"" may find hard to understand. Pulitzer Prize winning contemporary author Rick Bragg builds upon the powerful legacy of other southern writers, such as Eudora Welty and William Faulkner, but with a style all his own, making his real-life stories of growing up poor in Alabama poignant and often humorous. Rick Bragg is an extremely gifted writer whose works have acquired a universal audience even though most of Bragg's work can be categorized as Southern literature.
             The goal in this paper is to show how Bragg has developed his unique style and tone using voice, rhythm, and cohesion in his numerous magazine and newspaper articles, and in his six published books. I will begin with a section about the author himself and later include a section about his methods of writing and teaching creative writing to college students. I will also explore some of the controversy that Bragg has faced during his journalistic career.
             About the Author .
             Born on July 26, 1959 in Piedmont, Alabama, Rick was raised, along with his two brothers, in a life of poverty. His father was an alcoholic who was absent during much of Rick's childhood, but his grandparents, aunts, and uncles were influential in his life and a large portion of his writing tells about their generosity, love, and emotional support. .
             Beginning his journalistic career with his high school newspaper, Rick professionally reported the news for twenty years after that, finally landing at the New York Times. During those newspaper years Rick covered such stories as the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, the political turmoil in Haiti and the riots in Miami. Bragg had an almost Hemingway-like compulsion to be on the scene "in the action" of whatever he wrote about.