He was famous for capturing straight up the raw emotions of people living tough lives, sometimes using his speaking voice in an old-time country technique called recitation.
"Many of these artists have lived tough lives, but their work shows how, with vision and, often in painstaking detail, they have transformed simple materials into objects of great beauty and spiritual power".
Each vignette is told by a different voice--young, old, male, female, Korean, Haitian, Hispanic--all living tough lives in need of something that speaks to their hearts and gives them hope.
"But I'm not going to kid and not say I -- you know what, people do live really tough lives, much tougher lives than I have ever had to live," she said.
Jockeys live a tough life.
Moreover, in America the entire country was in shock after Enron and WorldCom and (more or less) willing to live with tough new laws.
Thanks to the war and its aftermath, their children have grown up in cities and do not want to live a tough rural life.
