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    Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood
    Unavailable
    Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood
    Unavailable
    Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood
    Ebook334 pages4 hours

    Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood

    By Hollis Gillespie

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Drawing on her peripatetic childhood as the daughter of a travelling salesman, and her adult residence in one of Atlanta's seedier crack neighbourhoods, columnist and NPR commentator Hollis Gillespie has assembled a comic, poignant memoir about her life, starring her unusual family and her crazy friends.

    NPR commentator Hollis Gillespie's outrageously funny–and equally heartbreaking–collection of autobiographical tales chronicles her journey through self–reckoning and the worst neighbourhoods in Atlanta in search of a home she can call her own. The daughter of a missile scientist and an alcoholic travelling trailer salesman, Gillespie was nine before she realized not everybody's mother made bombs, and thirty before she realized it was possible to live in one place longer than a six–month lease allows. Supporting her are the social outcasts she calls her best friends: Daniel, a talented and eccentric artist; Grant, who makes his living peddling folk art by a denounced nun who paints plywood signs with twisted evangelical sayings; and Lary, who often, out of compassion, offers to shoot her like a lame horse.

    Hollis's friends help her battle the mess of obstacles that stand in her way–including her warped childhood, in which her parents moved her and her siblings around the country like carnival barkers, chasing missile–building contracts and other whimsies, such as her father's dream to patent and sell door–to–door the world's most wondrous key–chain. A past like this will make you doubt you'll ever have a future, much less roots. Miraculously, though, Gillespie manages to plant exactly that: roots, as wrested and dubious as they are.

    As Gillespie says, "Life is too damn short to remain trapped in your own Alcatraz." Follow her on this wickedly funny journey as she manages to escape again and again.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 18, 2014
    ISBN9780062352026
    Unavailable
    Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood
    Author

    Hollis Gillespie

    Hollis Gillespie is a humor columnist, writer and comedian based in Atlanta, Georgia. She wrote for Atlanta's Creative Loafing weekly for eight years until October 2008.

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    Reviews for Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch

    3.5/5

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    • 1/5
      muy ingles y yono se
      hytjjffgtgkggjtjfn
    • 4/5
      Hollis Gillespie has a way of interweaving her crazy humorous life experiences in with these poignant insights about family and self. A really versatile, enjoyable writer.
    • 5/5
      excellent essays about her life and childhood. like david sedaris, but a lot less of a clean freak.
    • 3/5
      ....sometimes crude, sometimes overly witty, but some good laughs overall in this. I think it'd be funnier if she didn't think she was so funny and was perhaps a bit humble about her humor....but she writes for a mag I read now too, so lots must find it funny. Stories are only about 1 1/2 pages long, so a good loo reader....FAVORITE QUOTE: (after teen boyfriend takes his bible back after breaking up) Mom: " he took his bible back? well, I guess you're going straight to hell and that sure cuts your odds of having to see him again."
    • 5/5
      I loved this book, along with Confessions of a Recovering Slut. I very much enjoy the way that Hollis Gillespie writes -- each essay was about 3 pages long and the very first line of each one always got your attention immediately. Highly recommend. (And yes, definitely picked it up because of the cover and the title)