PublishedScribe Publications, June 2009 |
ISBN9781921372070 |
FormatSoftcover, 288 pages |
Dimensions19.9cm × 12.8cm × 2.8cm |
A raucous, truth-telling look at the white working poor - and why they hate liberalism.
A raucous, truth-telling look at the white working poor - and why they hate liberalism.
When Joe Bageant returned to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, he rediscovered his redneck roots- 'the great beery, NASCAR-loving, church-going, gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbucks'. But he soon realised that these were the very people who had carried George W. Bush to victory.
This seemed ironic, because Winchester, like countless American small towns, was fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass - a white ghetto of the working poor in which two in five people do not finish high school, nearly everyone over fifty has serious health problems and little or no health care, and credit ratings are virtually nonexistent.
What it adds up to, Bageant argues, is an unacknowledged, American class war from which alcohol, overeating, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape.
Deer Hunting with Jesus is a raucous mix of storytelling and political commentary. Bageant delivers a dose of redneck reality, describing 'white trashonomics' (mortgage and credit-card rackets that saddle the working poor with debt), the ubiquitous gun culture, factory jobs that are constantly on the verge of being outsourced, and the heady blend of Scots Irish culture with the blinkered 'magical thinking' of the Christian right.
By turns brutal, tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, Deer Hunting with Jesus is a potent antidote to what Bageant dubs 'the American hologram' - the televised, corporatised, virtual reality that distracts us from the insidious realities of American life.
'Joe Bageant is a brilliant writer. He evokes working class America like no one else. The account of his revisit to his Virginia roots is sobering, poignant, and instructive.'
-Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
'This book is righteous, self-righteous, exhilarating, and aggravating. By God, it's a raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck. As a blue state man with a red state childhood, I have been waiting for this book for years. We ignore its message at our peril.'
-Sherman Alexie, author of Reservation Blues
'Deer Hunting with Jesus is one of those rare books that is colourful, depressing, hilarious, and biting all at the same time. Joe Bageant has given us a glimpse into the vicious class war that is too often ignored or hidden by those happily perpetrating this war.'
-David Sirota, author of Hostile Takeover
'This recounting of lost lives - of white have-nots in one of our most have-not states - has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad. It is maddening and provocative that the true believers in 'American exceptionalism' and ersatz machismo side with those stepping all over them. Bageant's writing is as lyrical as Nelson Algren's, and if there's a semblance of hope, it's that he catches on with new readers thanks to the alternative media.'
-Studs Terkel, historian, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Good War
