Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie

…a fitfully compelling account of what it was like to be poor and white in Oklahoma in the 1940s and '50s. When the narrative focuses on those who peopled her childhood and teen years… and on the ordinary details of their hardscrabble lives, it is rich and evocative, a testimony to the power of faith and endurance. All too often, however, it indulges in a tiresome political correctness.… show more Make no mistake about it, there is a great deal that's powerful, and beautiful, here.… "Red Dirt" is at its best when Dunbar-Ortiz lets these elements flourish and, shushing the historian inside her, gives the storyteller free rein. show less