Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming Up from Under [Hardcover]

Michael Patrick MacDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2006

A powerfully redemptive story of escape from the Irish American ghetto.

Michael Patrick MacDonald's All Souls: A Family Story from Southie told the story of the loss of four of his siblings to the violence, poverty, and gangsterism of Boston's Irish American ghetto. The question "How did you get out?" has haunted MacDonald ever since. In response he has written this new book, a searingly honest story of reinvention that begins with young MacDonald's breakaway from the soul-crushing walls of Southie's Old Colony housing project and ends with two healing journeys to Ireland that are unlike anything in Irish American literature.

The story begins with MacDonald's first urgent forays outside Southie, into Boston and eventually to New York's East Village, where he becomes part of the club scene swirling around Johnny Rotten, Mission of Burma, the Clash, and other groups. MacDonald's one-of-a-kind 1980s social history gives us a powerful glimpse of what punk music is for him: a lifesaving form of subversion and self-education. But family tragedies draw him home again, where trauma and guilt lead to an emotional collapse. In a harrowing yet hilarious scene of self-discovery, MacDonald meets his father for the first time -- much too late. After this spectacularly failed attempt to connect, MacDonald travels to Ireland, first as an alienated young man who has learned to hate shamrocks with a passion, and then on a second trip with his extraordinary "Ma," a roots journey laced with both rebellion and profound redemption.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In All Souls, MacDonald told the heartbreaking story of the tragic deaths of four of his siblings and his family's suffering amidst a culture of silence in Southie, Boston's tough Irish ghetto. He also introduced the enduring character of his accordian-playing, fist-fighting "Ma," who raised her massive family on her own. MacDonald's second memoir continues the saga with the author turning his gaze upon himself in hope of explaining how he escaped where his brethren succumbed. It quickly becomes apparent that his survival has much to do with his perpetual status as the exile. He's the "quiet one" in his big Irish-Catholic family, the poor kid at Boston Latin High School. When his friends branch into drugs and alcohol, MacDonald remains sober, seeking refuge and a renewed sense of self in Boston's burgeoning early '80s punk rock scene, where he encounters such seminal figures as the Clash and Johnny Rotten. As the odd man out looking for a place to fit in, MacDonald journeys further and further away from Southie—first to downtown Boston, then to New York's Lower East Side—and the dangerous neighborhood rites that spelled doom for his family members. The book takes on a different tone as MacDonald heads to Europe after going to the Southie funeral of his father, a man he never knew. On different occasions—once with Ma—he finds his way to Ireland, his ancestral homeland, "to understand more about Southie, and Irish America in general." Even though MacDonald is far from the first Irish-American to discover the auld sod, he continues to courageously break Southie's silence in this tale of a journey that is as inspiring as it is haunting. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Seven years after All Souls (1999), a memoir of growing up in the poor Irish neighborhood of South Boston (or Southie), MacDonald returns with, well, a memoir of growing up in the poor Irish neighborhood of Southie. Whereas the first documented his family's tragic arc amid rampant crime, poverty, and racism, the focus in his second shifts to the author himself. As a teenager in the late 1970s, he discovered and immediately identified with the brash punk-rock scene being fashioned in tiny record stores and clubs. MacDonald deftly captures the thrilling and surprising initial relevance of the underground culture, shrugging off the more juvenile aspects that would soon pervade its aesthetic. After four of his siblings suffered horrific deaths, though, MacDonald eased away from the increasingly escapist punk lifestyle and in a revelatory trip to Ireland learned to embrace his heritage and connect with his community, rather than flee from it. Perhaps too wary of repeating himself, MacDonald often leaves gaping holes in this account. Still, his tale is powerful enough to drive readers back to his initial offering to stopper them. Ian Chipman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (September 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618470255
• ISBN-13: 978-0618470259
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #945,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Author of "All Souls: A Family Story From Southie" (Ballantine, October 2000: Beacon, 2007), American Book Award, New England Literary Lights Award (2000), The Myers Outstanding Book Award administered by the Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. Second book, "Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion" was published by Houghton Mifflin in September 2006 (Paperback Spring 2008). Awarded an Anne Cox Chambers Fellowship at the The MacDowell Colony, a Bellagio Center Fellowship through the Rockefeller Foundation, residencies at Blue Mountain Center and Djerassi Artist Residency Program. Author in Residence, Northeastern University Honors Program. Currently lives in Brooklyn NY. Writing screenplay combining both memoirs, All Souls and Easter Rising. www.michaelpatrickmacdonald.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Up From Southie, September 19, 2006

By 

G. Bestick (Dobbs Ferry, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming Up from Under (Hardcover)

The tribal aspects of South Boston's Irish have been written about before, but rarely with such intimacy and honesty. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in the Old Colony project during the seventies and eighties, part of a large family raised by a larger-than-life single mother. Even by project standards, his family had a horrible run of bad luck: his brother Davey, religious and distracted, commits suicide; sister Kathy ends up in coma after falling off a roof; brother Frankie gets killed pulling a bank robbery; and, shortly after, the call comes that brother Kevin has apparently hung himself in jail.

In his second memoir about coming of age in Southie, MacDonald confronts the carnage by asking himself why he was able to make it out of this mad world when so many others didn't. Interestingly, he gives a lot of credit to punk music. Listening to the Clash, the Slits, the Sex Pistols, and hanging out with other punks and punk musicians, allows him to try on an alternate identity. Being a smart kid, he starts to see that identities could be fluid and that geography wasn't necessarily destiny; if you told all the soul-crushers to just piss off, you might have a shot at reinventing yourself. But he discovers that the ties with his past aren't so easily cut. Pulling away comes with a price: in his case, a guilt that literally made him sick.

As part of his rebellion against his upbringing, MacDonald mostly stayed clear of drugs and drink, two major suck holes for Southie's children. In later life, he even becomes an anti-drug counselor in the neighborhood. He tries not to be judgmental toward those looking for a little relief from reality, reserving his anger for the dealers who prey on the neighborhood and the gangsters who control the dealers.

Michael has a different father than the other kids, though neither man lives with the family. Michael never sets eyes on his father, until the day of his wake, when he stares into his casket. His mother, Ma, is the book's most intriguing character. Ma seems both domineering and out of control, deeply caring and surpassingly callous, a person who doesn't fit smoothly into mainstream society but who loves life and loves to meet new people. MacDonald doesn't dig very deeply into her contradictions; she's a force he can't control, and he reacts to her with a mixture of wary respect, wry affection and occasional exasperation.

The last part of the book describes the trips MacDonald took to Ireland, partly to understand the origins of the life force and the follies that swirled around him in Irish South Boston. Ma accompanies him on one of these trips, and she fits like a jigsaw piece with the sociable, party-loving Irish of her homeland. Michael feels the emotional heat that's part of the Irish mystique, the same heat that kept him tied to his family and the place where he grew up, even as he was struggling mightily to pull free.

This book has a grace to it, which comes from MacDonald's willingness to tell the truth and his compassion for those who made it, those who might, and those who never will.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing book, September 23, 2006

By 

Ridgley Fitzsimmons - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming Up from Under (Hardcover)

A breathtaking and rare read that I can only liken to sneaking out of your safe bedroom window for the first time to discover a world beyond curfews.
This is one dangerous and amazing night out. "Easter Rising" crackles with all of the energy and desperation of the punk music that Is it's soundtrack and leads you on a sweaty journey into adulthood that does the impossible, an unabated coming of age story that transcends time and place while at the same time reconciling the two.
Even when "the quiet MacDonald" feels like a ghost it is a blessing that he doesn't write like one.
This memoir is both brilliant, heartbreaking, electrifying and ultimately inspiring. You are better for having jumped out of that bedroom window with MacDonald.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michael MacDonald Rising, October 15, 2006

By 

C. L. Eisenhardt "book lover and collector" (Arlington, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming Up from Under (Hardcover)

I am always a little nervous to read a second book by an author whose first book I adored, but I shouldn't have been afraid to read the second book by the incredibly talented writer Michael Patrick MacDonald. He more than lives up to my high expectations with his lyrical, moving, funny EASTER RISING. This is a far more personal book than ALL SOULS, his first book, describing in vivid detail the brilliantly creative methods Mr. MacDonald used to cope, and ultimately survive, a series of unimaginable family tragedies. His life and his books are a testament to the human power of resiliency and capacity for hope. I have read that Mr. MacDonald has many other stories to tell and I, for one, cannot wait to read them. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves memoirs, Boston, American (and Irish) history and plain old fashioned great writing.