se stories provide the structure of lifeö (White, 1992, p. 123). Bragg examines his past experiences with love and hatred, with self-doubt and self-knowledge, with resentment and pride, with anger and compassion. He struggles to leave his harsh past behind him, but is too tightly tied to it. And he does not want to squander ôthe knowledge and the stories that (my mother) and my people hold inside themö (Bragg, 1997, p. xvi).
A key concept of Narrative Therapy is that writing and re-writing oneÆs own life story can give ôpositive meaning to what others might have experienced as adversityö (Freedman & Combs 1996, p. 10). BraggÆs youth was one of adversity but in his book he reinterprets the ôobjectiveö reality of his childhood experiences as the second of three sons of a poverty-stricken ôwhite-trashö family in rural Alabama, of an alcoholic, abusive father and of a self-sacrificing, loving mother. To a large degree, Bragg relates his story in terms of his mother. He describes himself as the boy who climbed up her backbone ôto escape the poverty and hopelessness that ringed them, free and cleanö (Bragg, 1997, p. xii). Even though Bragg is a trained journalist, in a memoir that rewrites his past, objective reality can be subjective, or at least selective. Bragg, after all, has an agenda. He wants to vent his rage and resentment at people who did him wrong ûhis father, rich people and teachers who looked down on
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