The stereotypical Ashkenazi Jewish mother is fretful and overbearing. She stuffs her sons full of home cooking and her daughters full of dreams to marry a doctor or lawyer. This caricature depicts a controlling, materialistic, guilt-tripping woman whose pleasures and pains are connected solely to her children. But then there’s Renay Mandel Corren, the stereotype-defying star of Andy Corren’s debut book, Dirtbag Queen: A Memoir of My Mother.
This bodacious, bawdy redhead cracks dirty jokes and smokes weed in the bathtub. She’s a voracious reader and eater who devours literary smut as easily as she does chocolate babka. She works triple shifts at the bowling alley and gas station to put food on the table, and can enamor anyone she meets. She’s also a single mother of six, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. This is the portrait that Corren — a playwright, self-described Jewish redneck, and Renay’s youngest — lovingly crafts in Dirtbag Queen.
Corren’s paean to Renay makes clear that she’s iconic, from her beautifully manicured hands to her swollen, bunioned feet (which he dutifully massages). By describing her in these terms, Corren not only makes her out to be a badass, but he also puts forth a vital image of one Jewish mother. Renay, as Corren paints her, expands the narrative of both Jewish motherhood and womanhood. Renay is a Jewish mother who eats, farts, gambles, and has sex. This zaftig woman lives for pleasure, and instills that same verve in her children.
Corren loves language almost as much as he loves Renay. This book brims with vivid descriptions of the people and places that color his life. He doesn’t skimp on the details of bodily functions and sexual awakenings; he’s as funny as he is eloquent. The sheer amount of misadventure and mischief also keeps this memoir moving at a fast clip. Although the book covers various phases of life and runs the emotional gamut, it always returns to Renay and new ways to adulate her.
Beginning and ending with death, the book also shows the messiness of grieving as a family. Family itself is messy enough, but the ordeal of loss breaks and builds bonds all over again. Corren’s account of dealing with a family member’s death can also be a lesson in how to approach grief with humor, tenderness, and grace for ourselves and others.
Elana Spivack is a writer and journalist in New York City where she lives with her tuxedo cat, Stanley.
