Heather Ream’s debut publication, Lunchladies Bought My Prom Dress, is an unflinching account of her childhood and teenage years in Knoxville, TN. She manages to take some of her often tragic circumstances about growing up in poverty and make them flat out hilarious.
Photographs, interspersed throughout the memoir, give the reader a clear visual insight and understanding of her life at that time. Heather is someone who is determined to better herself and her life trajectory; when you read her book, you want Heather to succeed, and you want her to succeed grandly.
Heather invites the reader into her story by addressing her family as Mama, Daddy, Sissy, instead of their given names. She has created an environment where we feel as if they are people we might know, or with whom we are familiar and feel a kinship.
Mama is a firecracker who ignites at injustice with leonine protective instincts. “Mama had grown up a tomboy and was about as demure as a carnival barker selling health tonic.”
Daddy was a musical prodigy as a child, briefly attended seminary, and wound up working at a radio station. Also an artist, he was a kindly, gentle man who worked, and worked more, to provide for his family, without much success.
Sissy, her younger sister, is Heather’s sidekick and best friend.
The nuclear family unit is brave; the extended family is hard working and supportive. Heather had the advantage of being surrounded by strong and loving people who believed in education, their religion, and doing their best despite the odds.
Both of her parents attended seminary, from which her mother graduated, and despite the fact that her father did not, religion was an important part of their lives. As usual in her family, Heather employs tongue-in-cheek humor:
“I had heard plenty of prayer requests for physical healing. Some were common to our conservative, semi-rural area, like, ‘Please pray for my friend, Tonya as she has been stricken with hoof-and-mouth disease,’ or ‘Please keep my grandma in your prayers. She’s having surgery for the broken hip she got from kicking Jehovah’s Witnesses off her porch.’”
A facet of her self-awareness is that Heather is always looking forward and seeking ways to achieve her goals. A member of the National Honor Society, she haunts the library whenever she can and in high school chooses an unlikely selection of books such as novels by Stephen King, music biographies, and Miss Manners:
“Miss Manners had gently instilled an abundance of guidance that I hoped to use someday. I knew proper place settings for formal dinners and how to address envelopes if one spouse was a doctor and one wasn’t. My dreams of a more cultured future were still there, buried under the rotted bathroom floorboard.”
Heather Ream
Heather navigates her course with both wit and dedication to her beliefs and that is what makes her story compelling, and is probably one reason why the lunchladies at her school actually pooled their money to buy Heather a beautiful prom dress.
Poverty made Heather’s family different and it set her apart, from other children at school and at church, as well as social and activity groups they couldn’t afford. There are plenty of people who have grown up in circumstances similar to Heather’s; to them this memoir will read like their own biography. For people who have never lived like that, her story will read like fiction. However, for both groups and those in between, the concept of “being different” will resonate, in some way, with everyone.
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