My Little Town

Reviews / Votes

D. B. Tipmore, a writer of urbane wit, moved to a small town in rural Alabama in the hope of making a home. This brilliant book, coming ten years later, is the result of his experiences there. Composed of ten revelatory, sad, funny, and incisive chapters, My Little Town introduces the reader to special insights Tipmore has gained about the town, the region, and himself. What results is the perfect book, compassionately observed, for those who want to head to the South - or away from it. -- Michael Tolkin, award-winning filmmaker * author of NK3 and The Player * Tipmore combines the scientific precision of the anthropologist with the insight of a humanist in this compassionate portrait of a small Alabama town. He is that rare observer open to being changed by what he sees, with a point of view touched by homesickness and graced with detachment. A wonderful guide and memoir, elegantly written. -- Rev. Dr. Andrew Walker, vicar, St. Mary's, Bourne Street, London * author of Journey into Joy: Stations of the Resurrection * When an erudite bachelor Yankee set up housekeeping in central Alabama, it provided an opportunity to observe the best and worst about its citizens. There is an ancient prayer asking that God will allow us to see ourselves as others see us. I am not sure many folks in the Black Belt had D. B. Tipmore or his book in mind when they prayed that prayer, but My Little Town is its controversial answer. -- Wayne Flynt, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Auburn University History Department My Little Town is a remarkable book, profound and wise in its observations about life in the rural Deep South and elegantly written. -- Larry Watson * author of Let Him Go and other works of fiction * D. B. Tipmore's My Little Town captures the paradoxes of small-town Southern life. From their variants of chicken salad, to the inerrant study of the Protestant Bible, to the equal degrees of charm, rivalry, racial animosity, and willingness to help out at a moment's notice, the citizens of Tipmore's 'Lovelady' show us uncomfortable truths about how we live in such towns, and why some of us leave. A bittersweet portrait. -- Terry Barr * author of Secrets I'm Dying to Tell You, Don't Date Baptists and Other Warnings from My Alabama Mother, and other books * My Little Town is the tour de force of a writer whose unflinching honesty reveals the hidden layers and painful divisions within the American soul. In Tipmore's hands, Lovelady, Alabama, becomes a canvas to explore our common search for meaning and yearning for home. The book is profound, witty, and haunting. -- Lars Brownworth, historian * author of Julius Caesar: The Roman Colossus * You can add My Little Town to that important list of books about the South that includes W. J. Cash's classic The Mind of the South. But where Cash portrays the region in broad generalities, D. B. Tipmore gets to the intimate heart of things by focusing his keen eye on a town and way of life that signify so many of today's small towns and the rural South, where old struggles with new-and old often wins. He's a talented storyteller with an honest, unflinching eye. -- Robert Inman * author of Home Fires Burning and The Governor's Lady * D. B. Tipmore's portrait of the town he calls Lovelady, Alabama, reflects on a decade in residence - a decade in which he nursed and buried his mother, participated in the requisite social and religious institutions, and became fully enmeshed in its alluring web of gossip, kindnesses, home tours, and Harmonie Club dinners. And yet he retains the detachment of the career journalist he is, a critical distance that allows incisive analysis of the persistence of mores and institutions all but obsolete in other places. From this vantage point, he examines the legacies of segregation turned 'inter-cultural avoidance' that scuttle any hope of improving the collective lives of the town's residents. Peppered with moments of humor and humanity, this book excavates some of our culture's deepest ironies. -- Lyn C. Macgregor, University of Wisconsin-Madison * author of Habits of the Heartland: Small-Town Life in Modern America * D. B. Tipmore's My Little Town reminds me how those of us who grew up in small Southern communities continue to be shaped by their unique alchemy of race, place, religion, and custom. But as these rural towns begin to fade, they must be reimagined, or else risk losing the ability to make newcomers feel like they belong. This small book offers a powerful statement about the importance of place, even as it urges reconsideration of the things that any one particular place holds most dear. -- Ralph Eubanks * author of A Place Like Mississippi *