Title

All souls : a family story from Southie

Description

The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly gifted observer he was even as a child: [as if] we were protected, as if the whole neighborhood was watching our backs for threats, watching for all the enemies we could never really define.""--BOOK JACKET."But the threats - poverty, drugs, a shadowy gangster world - were real. MacDonald lost four of his siblings to violence and poverty. All Souls is heart-breaking testimony to lives lost too early, and the story of how a place so filled with pain could still be "the best place in the world.""--BOOK JACKET.

Identifier

823997

807072125

Creator

MacDonald, Michael Patrick

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

1999

Program air date: December 12, 1999

Publisher

Beacon Press

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Text

Transcription of Annotations
Notes on front endpapers list the names of the eleven children in the family, describe the violence and neglect they suffered and record briefly what happened to each of them. Other notes relate the criminal activities and violent deaths of other children and adults in this housing project in Boston. Also included is a reference to the author's involvement with Boston's gun-buyback program. -- These statements and questions are part of the notes: "Irish: not able to keep secrets; talking too loud." -- "What's an Irish Whisper?" -- "1978: it seemed for me busing had passed tension between Irish and Italians." -- Annotations by Brian Lamb in the margins and underlining of pertinent phrases throughout the book. -- Examples: p. 3: "Liberals were usually the ones working on social problems, and they never seemed to be able to fit urban poor whites into their world view, which tended to see blacks as the persistent dependent and their own white selves as provider." -- p. 118: "One day you'd be clapping and cheering the inspirational words of Louise Day Hicks and Senator Billy Bulger, and the next day you'd see blood on the news, black and white people's blood." -- p. 248: "Muadi called the white liberal organizations "plantations", and said they were dominated by whites who had no clue."

Subject

"MacDonald, Michael Patrick--Childhood and youth."

"McDonald family."

"Irish Americans--Massachusetts--Boston--Biography."

"Irish American families--Massachusetts--Boston."

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

This work may be protected by copyright laws and is provided for educational and research purposes only. Any infringing use may be subject to disciplinary action and/or civil or criminal liability as provided by law. If you believe that you are the rights-holder and object to Mason’s use of this image, please contact speccoll@gmu.edu.