Awards
1997 PEN/Jerard Fund Award for a work in progress
2001 Whiting Writers Award.
Synopses & Reviews
In this extraordinary literary debut third-generation homesteader Judy Blunt describes her hardscrabble life on the prairies of eastern Montana in prose as big and bold as the landscape.
On a ranch miles from nowhere, Judy Blunt grew up with cattle and snakes, outhouse and isolation, epic blizzards and devastating prairie fires. She also grew up with a set of rules and roles prescribed to her sex long before she was born, a chafing set of strictures she eventually had no choice but to flee, taking along three children and leaving behind a confused husband and the only life shed ever known. Gritty, lyrical, unsentimental and wise, Breaking Clean is at once informed by the myths of the West and powerful enough to break them down.
Review
"Staunch and unblinking. . . . If there is a trace of sentimentality [in Breaking Clean] I couldn't find it, which is why this book is such a valuable addition to the literature of place and the literature of passage."
Bill McKibben, The Washington Post
Review
"[Judy Blunt] has turned the memories of her childhood and young adulthood into a beautifully written memoir that is a meditation on how land and her life will always be intertwined ." Miriam Wolf, The San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"In Breaking Clean, Blunt strikes a delightfully tense, unsteady balance and . . . like an accomplished bucking bronco rider... masterfully maintains it throughout a wild-ride of a memoir." Los Angeles Times
Review
"A remarkable literary achievement. It is destined to be a classic in the
literature of Western women; excerpts should end up in school anthologies
for their brilliant evocation of blizzards and one-room schools." Sandra
Scofield, The Oregonian
Review
"What makes Blunt's book different from anything I've ever read about the West is the delicate eloquence with which she captures the cost of these hard lives on people's souls....Judy Blunt is such a natural writer and this book is so good, it's unthinkable to imagine that she might have never pursued this craft." Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times Book Review
Review
"Judy Blunt lived in a beloved country among beloved people. She grew up knowing blizzards and good horses, working cattle all day and then getting dinner on the table, impassable roads to town and babies with raging fevers a resolute country girl who became a ranch wife on the shortgrass plains of Montana. And she tells of leaving, the price of insisting on her right to fashion her own life. Breaking Clean is vivid and compelling, a classical American memoir." William Kittredge, author of The Nature of Generosity
Review
"A memoir with the fierce narrative force of an eastern Montana blizzard, rich in story and character, filled with the bone-chilling details of Blunts childhood. She writes without bitterness, with an abiding love of the land and the work and her family and friends that she finally left behind, at great sacrifice, to begin to write. This is a magnificent achievement, a book for the ages. Ive never read anything that compares with it." James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss
Review
"[An] astonishing literary debut, a dramatic and heartbreaking memoir...honed from difficult circumstances and crackling with energy long pent up...Having prevailed over a life of extreme isolation, Blunt manages to escape with poetry and feeling intact, singularly able to relive, with both aching honesty and occasional joy, a fascinating, ferocious coming of age." Elle
Review
"Blunt is, to put it another way, scarily good so right on, so focused, so in-your-face that you have to take the book slowly to cushion the blow....She writes without remorse, without flinching, striking matches off the scuffed soles of her feelings. When a writer can do that make it real and make it matter the world comes almost painfully alive."
National Geographic Adventure
Review
"No biographical sketch of Blunt can convey the depth of this literary achievement....Inheriting the literary territory previously claimed by Ingalls Wilder and Cather, Blunt (who's just been named a Whiting Writers' Award recipient) builds on their accomplishments, yet marks American literature in her own way. To shoehorn this into mere category or classification is to insult its power. Profound, and profoundly moving." Kirkus Reviews, *starred* review
Review
"In its precise, arresting descriptions of a working farm and its careful re-creation of how Blunt ultimately came to break free, this masterful debut is utterly strange, suspenseful and surprising a story whose threads connecting past and present are as transparent as cobwebs but as strong as barbed wire." Time Out New York
Review
"Blunt's attention to detail and dry humor make this debut emboldening. Her writing inspires respect for rural life and its 'intimacy born of isolation, rather than blood relation.'" Publishers Weekly, *starred* review
Review
"A lover of land in a land almost unlivable, a natural matriarch born and bred to patriarchy, a seer of complex truths among admirers of terse adages, Judy Blunt seems, at a glance, a classic misfit. But in this miracle of memoir she transcends the misfit's rancor to tell a story heroic, from beginning to end, for its perfect pitch. Breaking Clean is not mercilessly but mercifully honest. Doing what it must to free its stunning song, it leaves the culture, the land, and even the husband it rejects their dignity. It is a masterpiece."
David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K
Review
"Beautifully written . . . A lyrical account of [Judy Blunt's] struggle to escape the isolation and restriction of ranch life while, at the same time, honoring the ways in which such a far-flung community can come together in times of crisis and celebration. . . . Heartbreaking, mesmerizing, dramatic, crafted with a keen eye toward detail and a poet's sense of language, this memoir breaks new ground and brings a fresh perspective to the myth of rugged individualism that has for so long defined the rural West. Blunt's contribution to the literature of the West is enormous, but her contribution to the genre of memoir is even greater."
Kim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country
Review
"[Blunt] dissolves the romantic myths that shroud what is in fact a perpetually embattled way of life, one she both reveres and reviles. Hopefully, Blunt will keep honig her keen and poetic awareness, steely candor, and commanding storytelling skills and continue telling the true story of women in the West." Booklist
About the Author
Judy Blunt spent more than thirty years on wheat and cattle ranches in northeastern Montana, before leaving in 1986 to attend the University of Montana. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is the recipient of a Jacob K. Javits Graduate Fellowship and a Montana Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. She lives in Missoula, Montana.
Reading Group Guide
1. The first chapter of
Breaking Clean offers a preview of Blunts story, touching on some of the major turning points in her life. In what ways do the descriptions of her mother [p. 5], the conversation between her father and John [pp. 6-7], and the account of the marriage counseling session [pp. 9-10] establish the framework for the autobiography as a whole? What insights does this chapter give you into the varied, often contradictory, emotions Blunt feels in telling her story? For example, in describing her impatience with her children, why does Blunt say, “For a moment Im terrified Ill slip and tell them to get tough” [p. 4]?
2. What does the account of Blunts family history [pp. 17-18] reveal about the values and ideals that shaped her character? What aspects of her family legacy are most apparent in Blunt?
3. Blunts description of the impact of the introduction of electricity to Phillips county in the late 1950s [pp. 25-28] offers an unusual perspective on what most of us think of as progress. How does it bring out the realities—both practical and philosophical—that set rural, isolated communities apart from mainstream America?
4. As ranchers and farmers, the Blunts and their neighbors are inextricably connected to cycles of the seasons and to the crops and cattle they raise. The devastating blizzard of 1964 [pp. 41-59] is a compelling instance of the negative impact of nature on their lives. How does Blunt use the storm to tell a larger story about the community? What lessons are implicit in her fathers reaction to the deaths of his cattle and how do they relate to Blunts description of his approach to ranching [p. 39]? How does the language and imagery she uses here and elsewhere in the book emphasize the intimacy between the ranchers and the land they live on?
5. Despite the isolation of her community, Blunt is exposed to situations that children anywhere might encounter in the course of growing up. How does Blunt bring to life both the personal and the more universal meanings of the unsettling afternoon she and her sister spend with their teacher [pp. 70-75] through her choice of detail and her tone?
6. In recounting her reactions to a Native American classmate, Blunt writes, “What I remember from that time is that, with all the inborn arrogance of a white child raised in a white mans world, I thought well of myself for being kind to him. . . . There were so many things I knew without knowing why, things I learned as a child listening with half an ear to all that was said, and most intently to all that was not said” [pp. 84-85]. To what extent are “lessons of silence” an integral part of childhood?
7. Describing the onset of puberty, Blunt writes, “And when, in the inexorable process of time, my body betrayed me, my rage was terrible” [p. 97]. Why doesnt she—or cant she—turn to her mother for guidance and comfort during this difficult period?
8. “As a young ranch wife,” Blunt writes, “I wed my sixties-style feminism to a system of conflicting expectations and beliefs only slightly altered by a century of mute nobility. My brand of feminism celebrated strength through silence” [p. 154]. To what extent did Blunt succeed in melding the old-fashioned qualities of the “perfect” ranch wife with the ideals set forth by the feminist movement sweeping through the county in the 1960s? What impact did the circumstances of her life—her return to the community in which she grew up, her marriage to a man much older than she and the constant presence of her overbearing father-in-law—have on her ability to become an independent woman? How did her attachment to the land and her genuine admiration for the strong women in the community influence the life she created for herself and her family?
9. One of the things Blunt objects to most strenuously is that few women inherit the ranches and farms they grow up on. The rugged, independent rancher, however, was already disappearing when she was in high school and she acknowledges that “the place I grew up on had fallen under the wheels of big business—big land, big lease, big machine. Big debt” [p. 203]. Would Blunt have found a satisfactory place for herself as the owner of a twenty-first-century ranching business?
10. The contrast between the lives of men and women is a major theme of Breaking Clean. Early in the book, Blunt writes, “I could ride and jockey a John Deere as well as my brothers, but being female, I also learned to bake bread and can vegetables and reserve my opinions when the men were talking” [p. 4]. Was her childhood merely a preparation for becoming a ranch wife or did it help her develop qualities that would serve her well as an adult in general? In what ways did her childhood experiences and the traditions with which she grew up enhance her ability to make it on her own?
11. “Eventually I would come to understand that the rules and roles I fought were less about me than they were about my place, this piece of earth that I came to identify with as clearly as I did my family” [pp. 107-108]. To what extent was the environment Blunt grew up in shaped by a vision of the West that is deeply imbedded in American mythology? What particular elements or events in Blunts story belie the romantic image of cowboys and ranchers as a special breed, driven not by the profit motive but by “deeper, more soul-sustaining reasons, like freedom and autonomy” [p. 293]? Are men as well as women victims of the out-dated assumptions about life in the wide-open spaces of the West?
12. How would you characterize the tone of Breaking Clean? Are you sympathetic to Blunts point of view throughout? How successful is Blunt in relating the viewpoints of the people around her? Is Blunts admission that “although my memories are real, my interpretation of them is less trustworthy” [p. 33] equally applicable to all memoirs?
13. The memoirs of writers often reveal, either implicitly or explicitly, the forces that led them to become writers. What were the major influences on Blunts artistic development and her interest in storytelling? Did she need to exile herself from the world she grew up in to find her own voice?
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Breathtaking. . . . Blunts writing is visceral, yet never without humor and a raw, fierce honesty.”
—Chicago Tribune
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your groups discussion of Judy Blunts Breaking Clean, a lyrical, painstakingly honest memoir about growing up on a Montana ranch. In writing about her family and the isolated community they call home, Blunt brings to life Montanas glorious, wide-open spaces and the generosity of spirit that binds people together in times of need; but she also reveals the cruelties imposed by geography, distance, and weather, and by a society that remains, despite the strength and fortitude exhibited by generations of women, essentially a mans world.