Rainbow pie : a memoir of redneck America

While Obama's triumphant 'Yes we can' continued to reverberate, it was tempting to believe that a new era of opportunity had dawned. But for several million dirt-poor, disgruntled Americans the possibility of change is as far away as ever. These are the gun-owning, donut dunkin', uninsured, underemployed rednecks who occupy America's heartland: the ones who never got a slice of the pie during the good times, and the ones who have been hit hardest by the economic slump. Theirs is a hard-luck story that goes back generations and Joe Bageant tells it here with poignancy, indignation, and tinder-dry wit. Through the tale of his own rambunctious Scots-Irish family, starting with his grandparents Maw and Pap, Bageant traces the post-war migration of the rural poor to the sprawling suburbs where they found, not the affluence they'd dreamed of, but isolation and deprivation, and the bitter futility of hope. What do the white working poor of America want, and what does America want for them? "Combining recollection, stories, accounts, remembrance, and analysis, the book offers an intimate look at what Americans lost in the massive and orchestrated post-war social and economic shift from an agricultural to an urban consumer society. Along the way, he also provides insights into how 'the second and third generation of displaced agrarians', as Gore Vidal described them, now fuel the discontent of America's politically conservative, God-fearing, Obama-hating 'red-staters'. These are the gun-owning, uninsured, underemployed white tribes inhabiting America's urban and suburban heartland: the ones who never got a slice of the pie during the good times, and the ones hit hardest by America's bad times, and who hit back during election years. Their 'tough work and tougher luck' story stretches over generations, and Bageant tells it here with poignancy, indignation, and tinder-dry wit"--Page 4 of cover. The spokesman for redneck America is back - and this time it's personal.