New Book Alert: Trailer Trash: An ‘80’s Memoir by Angie Cavallari; Totally Detailed and Radical Memoir Is Perfect For Children of The ‘80’s

New Book Alert: Trailer Trash: An ‘80’s Memoir by Angie Cavallari; Totally Detailed and Radical Memoir Is Perfect For Children of The ‘80’s

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




I have two reasons to identify with Angie Cavallari's book, Trailer Trash: An ‘80’s Memoir. 1) Like Cavallari, I was a child of the ‘80’s and spent some of that gnarly time growing up in Florida (Ft. Walton Beach to be precise) and 2) My Mom grew up in Tampa, Florida as Cavallari did. So we both understood and enjoyed many of the things Cavallari spoke of in her book.

Cavallari, her parents, sister, and brother moved to the Pelican Mobile Home Park in Tampa, Florida in 1980 where her parents managed the trailer park. Cavallari's childhood was forever linked with the park, its eccentric residents, and memories of MTV music videos, Rubik's Cubes, and E.T.

Trailer Trash doesn't have a large plot so much as it features several small moments organized into chapters with minimal dialogue. That works well for this book. Cavallari's reminisces are rich in detail and recall that bring these moments to life. When she describes the tedious task that she and her siblings had of cleaning the trailers, the Reader's nose wrinkles at the accounts of soiled sheets, drug paraphernalia, broken bottles and who really wants to know what else.

The highlight of any book set in the ‘80’s, especially for those of us who grew up in that time, is the constant parade of trends, fads, entertainment, and other signs of an ‘80’s upbringing. The book is peppered with various songs and music videos such as Genesis’ “Land of Confusion,” Debbie Gibson's “Lost in Your Eyes”, and The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” that are probably meant to present earworms for the average Reader. Cavallari described various activities like playing on a Slip and Slide and going to a skating rink (called originally enough, the United Skates of America) as well as watching prime time shows like Thee A Team, Dukes of Hazard, and Knight Rider, and You Can't Do That on Television on Nickelodeon and Don Knott's movies on the Disney Channel. She also writes about fashion trends like extremely permed hair and large fist-sized hoop earrings. These memories will fill former ‘80’s kids with warm nostalgia or embarrassed derision (and will no doubt give children or younger relatives and friends more fuel with which to tease them.).

Cavallari also captures the Florida setting so well that my mother who is also a former resident of Tampa Bay recognized them. Cavallari frequently watched Dr. Paul Bearer, the local Creature Feature host who showed older cheesy horror movies (no doubt directed by the likes of William Castle). She also writes of visiting the Ben T. Davis Beach (AKA Tampa Bay Beach) which far from being a paradise, Cavallari considered it crowded, noisy, hot, and extremely polluted and dirty. Cavallari even states that the only thing she hated more than cleaning the mobile home units was “going to the beach with (my) Mom.”

Cavallari also captures the eccentric spirit of a state that thrives on tourism. She visited the usual theme parks such as Walt Disney World (which she described as the only place her “family behaved themselves.”) and Busch Gardens. She also acknowledges the stranger tourist sites that Central Florida had to offer like Gibsonton, a small town that was home to various carnival workers during the winter season. Cavallari described the homes with amusement park rides in their front yards and dives run by sideshow entertainers in a way that both teases them for their weirdness and respects them as people who live for standing out in the crowd and being themselves.

Cavallari also offers helpful lists including glossary terms and descriptions of the various tenants. The glossary terms offer the lingo that is used in the trailer park as well as nearby Gibsonton. The glossaries are hilarious and helpful with terms such as “Mobile Homes” (what the residents prefer to call trailers) or “TPD” (the Tampa Police Department who seemingly get called in at least once a day.) The Gibsonton section is rich in terms like such as “Mark” (people who attend carnivals so named because the employees could easily con them to take part in the rigged games) and brilliantly foreshadows the Cavallari's eventual move to Gibtown (Gibsonton to the locals).

The residents are also described in a list format which focuses on their oddities making them a bizarre memorable bunch. They range from Florence who wore halter tops and no brassieres and was often seen walking to and from the liquor store to “Drive-Thru Bob” who was the first person Cavallari met who had an emergency tracheotomy and Bob’s wife, Alice, who was an expert in all things sitcom and would often describe various episodes in great detail. The Pelican Mobile Home Park appeared to be an odd assortment of alcoholism, drug addiction, and peculiar traits that could be signs of mental illness. It's no wonder that many of the tenants would eventually die of heart disease, natural causes and other means. These deaths would eventually cause the Cavallari's family to move and apparently traumatized her so much that she would later recall them in great detail and abandon in her book.

Cavallari captures her youth brilliantly. The end appears to set up a sequel in which the family moved from the trailer park to Gibsonton. I look forward to another trip down Cavallari's memory lane.

Classics Corner: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: Angelou's Memoir Captures The Beauty, Sadness, Terror, and Strength of Her Youth

Classics Corner: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: Angelou's Memoir Captures The Beauty, Sadness, Terror, and Strength of Her Youth
By Julie Sara Porter, Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Maya Angelou's classic memoir I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is probably the gold standard of childhood memoirs. Angelou recounted a childhood troubled by parental separation, racism, child molestation, sexism, and teenage pregnancy with beauty and intelligence that also defined her career as a poet and Civil Rights activist.

Maya, born Marguerite Johnson (but nicknamed "My" or "Maya" by her older brother, Bailey) recounted her childhood from the time she was three years old when she and her brother were sent to live at their grandmother's home in Stamps, Arkansas to when she was 16 and gave birth to her son, Clyde. Angelou's autobiography is written exclusively from her childhood self in which she is intelligent, shy, insecure, and confused about the world around her.

The book is filled with beautiful descriptions of Angelou's memories. On her and Bailey's arrival in Stamps, she describes the reaction of  her grandmother's store (which is the nerve center of Stamps) as "Early in the century, Momma (we soon stopped calling her Grandmother) sold lunches to the sawmen  in the lumber yard (east Stamps) and the seedmen at the cotton gin (west Stamps). Her crisp meat pies and cool lemonade when joined to her miraculous ability to be in two places at the same time assured her business success." Using humor and beautiful description, Angelou captures her youth as well as she captured her poetry in a way that enchants and inspires the Reader.

Angelou's grandmother, Annie Henderson, filled a loving presence in Angelou's young life. She writes "(Her grandmother) was undemonstrative in her love but uncompromising in that love. A deep-brooding love hung over everything she touched." "Momma" Henderson was a woman of deep strength and faith. Many of Angelou's strongest memories are of her grandmother taking her to church, introducing her to the various members of the community, and distributing motherly wisdom and advice to Maya and Bailey. She was a true warm and motherly soul that provided comfort for Angelou's dark childhood.

Many of Angelou's darkest childhood memories were caused by those who should have loved and cared for her: her parents. Her father, Bailey Johnson Sr. was a distant presence in young Maya's life. In fact he only appears twice in the book: once to drive his daughter to St. Louis to live with her mother and another time to invite a then-teenage Maya to spend the summer with him and his girlfriend in San Diego (The summer ended with  a huge fight between Maya, her father, and his girlfriend resulting in her becoming temporarily homeless.)

As bad a time as Angelou had with her father, the time with her mother was worse. Her mother had
a very glamorous appearance almost like a film star but was very immature and somewhat self-centered, more interested in being buddies with Maya and Bailey than being a mother. This is particularly evident when the children lived with her and her boyfriend in St. Louis. The boyfriend raped 8  year old Maya and threatened to kill Bailey if she tells anyone. The isolation that she felt during the rape and its aftermath is deeply felt as she withdraws into herself unable to trust her mother to protect her.
Maya continued to feel isolated even after the boyfriend was arrested and put to trial. He was released after a year only to be found dead under mysterious circumstances (possibly caused by her uncles). However this does not give Angelou any release as she was  rendered mute for five years from the trauma.

Despite the trauma that Angelou endured from her parents, she encounters love and support from her grandmother and brother, Bailey. (Bailey encourages Maya to come forward about the rape despite the threats to his life). But even they can't shield children from racism. Racism is prominently felt throughout the book in different passages that reveal the cruelty of the bigots around Angelou and her family.
Three "powhitetrash" girls mocked and displayed  vulgar gestures to Angelou's grandmother. Her disabled Uncle Willie was  chased by Ku Klux Klan members only to find safety in a potato and onion bin. A white dentist refused  to treat Maya's teeth which Angelou envisions a dramatic confrontation in which Momma Henderson confounds the dentist and makes him change his ways. (In reality she had to remind him of a debt he owed her, but Angelou always liked her version better.) In another passage, a white professor gave a graduation speech which basically tells the mostly black audience that they will never be good at anything but in sports. During his speech, Maya felt ashamed and embarrassed at her race but then became defiant determined to prove him wrong.

The struggles within her family and from the racism outside would lead most people to despair, but Angelou discovered her strength through a love of reading and learning. She writes that  William Shakespeare is her "first white love" as she discovered his works at a young age. After that she recognizes the transformation that reading provides for her and a talent for writing. Angelou's writing suggested that her love of reading even proved miraculous at times.
After her selective muteness, Maya bonded with Mrs. Flowers, a Stamps intellectual who offered Maya poems and books to read. This connection to her love of reading, freed Maya from the trauma of her rape and allowed her to read a poem aloud in school.

Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings captured a troubled childhood but did so with humor, beauty, and strength found in a love of family and learning. She turned a difficult background into a work of triumph.