Dirtbag Queen

by Andy Corren ★★★★★

After Renay Mandel Corren died at the age of 84, her youngest son Andy penned an obituary that went viral for its irreverence and tongue-in-cheek recounting of a large and loud woman who lived life to the fullest. The obituary opens with the line "A plus-sized Jewish lady redneck died in El Paso on Saturday" and follows with passages like the following:

"Renay turned her voracious mind to the home front, becoming a model stay at home parent, a supermom, really, just the perfect PTA lady, volunteer, amateur baker and-AHHAHAA HA! HA! HA! Just kidding, y'all! Renay—Rosie to her friends, and this was a broad who never met a stranger—worked double shifts with Doreen, ate a ton of carbs with Bernie, and could occasionally be stirred to stew some stuffed cabbage for the kids. She played cards like a shark, bowled and played cribbage like a pro, and laughed with the boys until the wee hours, long after the last pin dropped."

Renay Corren was not famous in any meaningful way, and her son Andy is not (or was not) a professional writer. So how does this memoir come to be published? Apparently there was enough in the obituary that it caught someone's eye, and Dirtbag Queen is effectively a 279-page "extended version" of what he started. But does it work? It absolutely does.

Marketed as a "Memoir of My Mother", the book is primarily a recounting of the first 18 years of Andy Corren's life at home with force-of-nature Renay and his three older brothers, known to all only by their nicknames "Rabbi", "Asshole", and "Twin". The events of Dirtbag Queen primarily take place in Fayetteville, North Carolina. From the "summer of Divorce '78" through his high school graduation in 1987, Corren reflects on the endless slew of challenges that came the family's way. Renay was a single mother, trying to raise four boys while working three jobs. It's no surprise, given that setup, that constant money challenges faced the family—"the only poor Jews in all of Fayetteville"—and Renay's ability to work tirelessly, sweet-talk, gamble and steal allowed them to scrape by.

Andy was her most constant companion during those years. He realized early that he was gay, and I'm sure Renay did as well. "I was her youngest, the final one, and she had desperately prayed day and night throughout my blessed germination that I would be a girl—and sort of got her wish, if we're being honest," Corren writes. Renay called him "Ann" privately, and they'd spend hours reading smutty Jackie Collins novels or poring over Hollywood gossip, snuggled together in Renay's queen-sized waterbed.

The majority of the book focuses on these formative years for Andy, bouncing between barely believable stories of the families antics, Renay's unwavering energy working at B&B Lanes bowling alley or manning the register at the local Sunoco gas station, and Andy's coming-of-age as a gay boy in a place and time and household that provided no guidance as he tried to make sense of himself. It's as much Andy's memoir as it is his mother's—perhaps even more—but he regularly returns to the book's intended focus, recentering on Renay when he diverges too deeply into himself. It's frequently laugh-out-loud funny, almost always irreverent, but carries an underlying emphasis that even though the Corren boys' upbringing may look significantly different and even borderline neglectful, there was an underpinning of love beneath the chaos, something that is made clear when the book delves into Renay's final days.

Corren can get a little carried away with some overly flowery language and descriptions, and he's less resistant than most to the siren's song of alliterative prose. "The candied, kaleidoscopic carpets of B&B would be teeming with packs of horny high schoolers," or "we left behind our fantastical, ferociously funny, flatulent mother" are some such examples. It can read initially as if he's trying too hard, but by the end Corren's consistent commitment garners friendly feelings of familiarity. It's all feels like it's an intentional nod to the theatrical nature of the memoir's outsized title subject (and her son), and any method of telling that was more subdued simply wouldn't be Renay.

It can be easy to get lost in Corren's unwavering return to humor in the face of adversity, and if read the wrong way, one could easily mistake him and other Correns for seeming uncaring or heartless at some of the darkest times. At one point, he acknowledges that fact:

"Despite the impression I may have given, dear Reader, I am a very, very sad man right now.

I know it seems otherwise. I get it. I am a clown. I make jokes...It must look like a pretty fun party. I must seem quite happy-go-fucking-lucky about all this death.

I am wrecked to my very DNA."

While this would be enjoyable in print, I highly recommend listening to it if you're planning to enjoy the book. Corren reads it himself, and his background in the theater and competing at the state level in forensics make it as good an audiobook performance as I have heard. The combination of his North Carolina drawl and flamboyant sarcasm add an extra dimension to his stories, and hearing his rendition adds a layer of clarity. "I am not proud of wearing jorts to (the) funeral, but it was a sticky ninety-eight degrees with 85 percent humidity. So fuck it. Jorts-and-tank-top sendoff for her" can read more callous than it actually is when you hear Corren perform the passage in the audiobook. There's a tongue-in-cheek quality throughout.

I was a bit skeptical that a first-time author could turn a thousand-word obituary into a full-length memoir, but there's more than enough content to hold a reader's interest, and Corren has plenty of talent to deliver it effectively. The book simply worked for me, in all its crazy, irreverent, jaw-dropping glory. It's a perfect audio companion for a road trip, and a worthy tribute to a large life well-lived.