In this hybrid work of literary nonfiction, Greg Bottoms writes about growing up white and working class in Tidewater Virginia, in the ’70s.
His stories reveal the everyday experience of living inside complex, systemic racism that is often invisible to economically and politically marginalized white southerners—people who have benefited from racism in material ways while also being damaged by it.
Setting personal memories alongside documentary photography, social history, and cultural critique, Lowest White Boy reveals how normalized racial animus and reactionary white identity politics get filtered through the mind of a child.
Read Lowest White Boy alongside of—in addition to—works by Black writers. It studies racism from nearly every angle, including that of documentary photography. In the micro-memoirs that make up the core of the book, a child’s awareness of right and wrong contrasts sharply with an ideology of white supremacy and hate. If you want to understand the roots of systemic racism in America, read this brilliant book that’s part memoir, part American social history, part jeremiad.
Greg Bottoms is a memoirist, essayist, and Professor of English at the University of Vermont, where he teaches nonfiction writing. His books include Angelhead: My Brother's Descent into Madness, The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art, Fight Scenes, Spiritual American Trash: Portraits from the Margins of Art of Faith, and Lowest White Boy. Acclaim for his books includes an Esquire nonfiction “Book of the Year,” a Book Sense Nonfiction Pick from independent book sellers, a “Top Indie Fiction Pick” from Library Journal, and long-list recognition from the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Story Prize.