The Cracker Queen: A Memoir of a Jagged, Joyful Life

by Lauretta Hannon

Overview

A poignant memoir of life on the wrong side of the tracks-which was a SIBA bestseller in hardcover-with a colorful cast of misfits, plenty of belly laughs, and lessons for finding joy in spite of hardship

Move over, Sweet Potato Queens. Thanks to Lauretta Hannon, the Cracker Queens are finally having their say. From her wildly popular NPR segments to her colorful one-woman show, Hannon is showing the world a different kind of Southern girl-a strong, authentic, fearless, flawed, resourceful, and sometimes outrageous woman-the anti-Southern Belle.

The Cracker Queen takes readers from backwater Georgia to Savannah's most eccentric neighborhoods for a wild ride featuring a distinctly dysfunctional family and a lively crew of hellions, heroines, bad seeds, and renegades. Full of warmth, outrageous wit, and world-class storytelling, The Cracker Queen is a celebration of living out loud, finding humor in desperate situations, and loving life to death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592405312
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/06/2010
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lauretta Hannon is a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and Georgia Public Radio’s Georgia Gazette, and has contributed to numerous newspapers. Winner of more than two hundred awards in marketing and promotions, she is the marketing director at Atlanta Technical College.

Table of Contents

Introduction … Everything You Need to Know I Learned Inside a Singlewide 1

Part 1 Comin' Up the Hard Way

The Indian Princess 7

Jazz Daddy 9

Four Roses 13

Bad Blood 17

War Town 20

Mama and the Chain Gang 24

Discord 26

Underwater Grace 31

Skateland 34

Goat Power 40

Breakdown 42

Strawberry Dress 48

Wrongsville 54

Blue-Light Terror 59

Crazy Aunt Carrie 67

Blue Christians 70

Ridin' High and Shirtless 74

300 Minutes 80

Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Book 84

Part 2 God Save the Queen (from Herself)

The Tree That Owns Itself 93

Winged Skeletons 96

Wez-lee-an 101

Gutters and Stars 103

Way South of Normal 105

It's Vacuous at the Top 112

You Put a Root on Me 116

Pinkie's Is Closed on Sundays! 123

Miss Vassie Thompson Has a Spare Room for an Elderly Person 129

Cordell 134

Bad Day at Work 137

Scooterpootin' 144

We Mean You No Harm 155

Artifice 165

Part 3 The way of the Cracker Queen

The Regal Essentials 177

The Royal Necessities 188

Adjust That Crown, Your Horns Are Showing 193

Majestic Distinctions 200

What Becomes a Cracker Queen Most 214

Acknowledgments 223

What People are Saying About This

Lee Smith

I raced through this book—horrified, laughing out loud, and weeping by turns. I say, let's throw out all the self-help and inspirational books in the country, and put up The Cracker Queen displays instead! Hannon really made me think, and I'm going to whup some ass, too. (Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls and On Agate Hill)

Rosemary Daniell

Watch out, Paula Deen and Jill Conner Browne! Chock full of unforgettable lines, The Cracker Queen delights again and again as the intrepid Hannon turns her hardscrabble beginnings into a major laugh fest that will leave her readers wanting more. Indeed, they will fall in love – as I did – with Hannon's wit and gutsy take on, well, everything. (Rosemary Daniell, author of Secrets of the Zona Rosa and Fatal Flowers)

Terry Kay

The heart, soul, and muscle of The Cracker Queen are in the often poignant, often shocking (but always engaging) pieces of Hannon's experiences. But there is more to it than that: there's also the promise of a remarkably gifted writer, one who understands that she is a medium for her environment, and, for readers, that is cause for great celebration. (Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog and The Book of Marie)

Editorial Reviews

Hannon's stories move from country-hick hilarious to poignant and touching.

Savannah Morning News

Lauretta's hilarious depictions of Steel Magnolias everywhere provide perfect proof that the best storyteller—and characters—in the South are women.

White County News

As Hannon, a contributor to NPR's All Things Considered, writes of her impoverished childhood in a dysfunctional family in Georgia, her college experiences, and a career in marketing, she touts the core values of love, forgiveness, and gratitude that helped her make her way; she also writes that one needs to conquer fear and whup some ass. Despite the soundness of the values she espouses, the hard-luck story she relates here is nothing more than a series of sound bites-she jumps from one incident to another without much cohesion or continuity, e.g., one chapter starts and ends with Hannon buying school clothes but takes unrelated detours in between. There are some fun chapters on haints(the Southern term for ghosts), but the book feels more like a marketing tool for Hannon than a memoir of substance. Not recommended.
—Gina Kaiser

Library Journal

NPR commentator Hannon explains why "hardship and hard living are great enhancers.""Nonsmokers, Yankees, professors and even men" can also be Cracker Queens, she avers, so long as they live by this dictum: "I have a choice in how I see and react to things. I can choose to accept whatever comes at me with love and gratitude. I don't have to be oppressed-or anyone's victim. I can live large even if I'm huddling in a hovel." Given this premise, it's not surprising that the author recounts a difficult youth of scant means dominated by an alcoholic, mentally ill mother and a much-loved father she saw only on weekends and holidays. Entitlement is not an issue here, and Hannon hails the power of laughter as the iron lung of life. Nonetheless, she frequently wrings the heart with her portrait of a home life ever on the verge of combusting, periodically igniting into mayhem. Crazy relatives came by the bucketful, and the author draws a careful line between complete losers ("Scooter was the nastiest waste of protoplasm that ever walked the earth") and those whose weaknesses are evidence of their humanity. Her uncanny emotional balance allows her to extract nuggets of goodness from a mother with a lavish soul but a lot of problems, and from her Savannah, Ga., neighborhood, so crime-ridden that the local old men formed a "Geriatric Militia" armed with .45s and .38s. Life is short, so why be tasteful, she asks. Isn't it better to be fearless, authentic and have a sense of humor? Wouldn't you prefer love, forgiveness, thankfulness and purpose? These are not merely palliatives for Hannnon, but daily considerations. A bracing, heart-gladdening embrace of human foibles and strangeness. Agent: JoanneWyckoff/Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews