My Own Alphabet
Stories and essays by Bobbie Louise Hawkins

"Arranging the subjects of her pieces alphabetically, Hawkins jogs memory and induces fantasy . . . bits and pieces of varying length are juxtaposed &, once fit together, the life of a woman emerges. . . . Hawkins moves with apparent ease from tale to tale, suffusing each with irony, anger or love as the occasion demands." - Publishers Weekly

"If more writers were writing like Bobbie Louise Hawkins - economically and truly about the only human things that interest us in prose: the past, the family, love, hate, duty, forgiveness - then maybe a few more thousand Americans would be reading narrative fiction and nourishing themselves on the oldest of all safe and enduring pleasures: news and fun and consolation." - Reynolds Price

"Hawkins is a marvelous writer whose pieces vibrate with humor and sensitivity. . . . Her work unravels her experiences in wonderfully perceptive descriptions, often with feminist overtones." - Buffalo Evening News

In a sensitive tribute to the dominating learning experience of our childhood, My Own Alphabet uses each letter of the alphabet to mark Hawkins’s personal vision of what makes the world go round: A is for Attitude and Aging; D is for Death and Dying and Domestic Nirvana; H is for Heartbreak. Reminiscent of Russell Baker’s stories of the South, these full-bellied essays, anecdotes, theatrical monologues, and stories overflow in a cornucopia of rich revelations, experiences, and places that thoroughly entertain the reader in a witty, provocative, and poignant story-telling style.

Bobbie Louise Hawkins has worked as an artist, playwright, and actress, in addition to writing both poetry and prose. Her previous books include One Small Saga, Back To Texas (Bearhug), Frenchy and Cuban Pete (Tombouctou), and Almost Everything. During the early 1980s, she toured with Terry Garthwaite and Rosalie Sorrels, performing a combination of jazz, story-telling, and folk music, on the college/coffee house circuit.