All Souls: A Family Story From Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald
By Micheal Patrick MacDonald. (Ballentine Books under The Random House Publishing Corporation, 1999, 266pp. $14.00)
Michael Patrick MacDonald saw hatred animated on a Friday in the early days of October. Some people were reading the newspaper in brightly lit kitchens. Some children were coloring with brightly hued crayons. Some fathers were getting into cars in front of their beautiful homes. But there were no crayons, bright kitchens, or fathers in nice cars on Dorchester Street in Southie that day. Only the cruelest manifestation of blind hatred. Michael Patrick MacDonald was an innocent child when he stood only feet away from a black man who was having the life literally beaten from his body, one kick, one punch, one rock at a time.
"I remember the man's tears clearing paths in the blood on his face."
Michael Patrick MacDonald lived a frightening life. To turn the book over and read the back cover, one might picture a decidedly idyllic existence. At times frightening, at times splendid, but always full of love. But to open this book is to open the door to Southie's ugly truth, to MacDonald's ugly truth, to take it in for all it's worth, to draw our own conclusions. One boy's hell is another boy's playground. Ma MacDonald is a palm tree in a hurricane, bending and swaying in the violent winds of Southie's interior, even as things are flying at her head, she crouches down to protect her children, to keep them out of harms way. We grew up watching Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow and Peanuts. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up watching violence, sadness and death.
MacDonald recalls Southie quite like an adult might describe his abusive father. He...
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...ing to the light of day. Michael Patrick MacDonald wants to share with us his Southie. Right or wrong, biased or objective, it was his life. He lived it, he survived it, and he has decided to recapture it for the greater good of all of the residents of every Old Colony Project, for all of the Davey's and the Ma MacDonalds, for every kid who cries at night about things a kid should never cry about. Fiction is subject to criticism of a structured sort. But this is someone's life. Balanced or not, this is what happened. Conclusions don't change the outcome. Full coverage of the subject won't bring Frankie back. Formulaic critiques won't change the fact that Moe Duggan stabbed his two sons. This book isn't really a book at all. It's a door. A door to a life. A life we can live right along with the MacDonald clan, from the safety of our warm, cozy, roach free living rooms.
In the autobiography Black Boy by Richard Wright, Wright’s defining aspect is his hunger for equality between whites and blacks in the Jim Crow South. Wright recounts his life from a young boy in the repugnant south to an adult in the north. In the book, Wright’s interpretation of hunger goes beyond the literal denotation. Thus, Wright possesses an insatiable hunger for knowledge, acceptance, and understanding. Wright’s encounters with racial discrimination exhibit the depths of misunderstanding fostered by an imbalance of power.
Touching upon one specific case of this growing problem, she incorporates “Michael Brown,” who was an “18-year old unarmed black man shot down by a white police officer.” As heartbreaking as it sounds, it has happened on several occasions to men similar to “Michael Brown.” Accordingly, Myers formulates that it “is the same story. It is just different names.” Myers logically lists the other names of several black men who unfortunately fell victim to hate crimes, (Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin), as well as flashing their images on the screen. Not only does Verna Myers use imagery in order to show that there is an evident issue with brutality and racism, but she knows it will tug on her viewers heartstrings. Likewise, this makes her audience become wary and sympathetic towards the situation at
John Howard Griffin’s chronicled experiences as a black man in his book, “Black Like Me” is an arrogant if well meaning book. It is arrogant because a 28 day experiment does not compare to the years (especially when learning right from wrong) of prolonged discrimination and racism suffered by African-Americans in the southern United States during the 1950’s.
King’s critics wrote that he was “unwise and untimely” in his pursuit of direct action and that he ought to have ‘waited’ for change, King explains that “This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never’”. This short statement hits home especially when followed up with a lengthy paragraph detailing injustices done towards African Americans, including lynching and drowning. In his descriptions King uses familial terms such as ‘mother’ and ‘father’, which are words that typically elicit an emotional response from an audience, to picture ones family in such terrible situations would surely drive home the idea that the African American community cannot ‘wait’ anymore for a freedom that will probably never be given to them
Prejudice is a cancer that spreads hate among its perpetrators and victims alike. In 1930 Langston Hughes penned the novel, Not Without Laughter. This powerful story, written from the perspective of an African-American boy named James “Sandy” Rodgers, begins in the early 1900’s in the small town of Stanton, Kansas. Through the eyes of young Sandy, we see the devastating impact of racism on his family and those they are close to. We also see how the generations of abuse by whites caused a divide within the black community. Among, and even within, black families there were several social classes that seemed to hinge on seeking equality through gaining the approval of whites. The class someone belonged to was determined by the color of their skin, the type of church one attended, their level of education, and where an individual was able to find work.
After reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, a novel that exposes the short life of Chris McCandless and the clues to the mystery of his untimely death, we as readers can comprehend and fathom the actions and thoughts of Chris McCandless if we are able to perceive and distinguish the characteristics and results of a family that is dysfunctional. More specifically, a dysfunctional family in which there is an authoritarian parent that greatly impacts the life and actions of the other members in the family. This parent may employ a perfectionist attitude on the children which can be debilitating in the long run. The lack of proper parenting can force children to take up nontraditional roles to facilitate proper family functioning. This unnecessary
James Garbarino (1999) discusses the boys who are lost and ways that they can learn to see again in his book Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them. He takes an in depth look at what he calls the "epidemic of youth violence" in America in order to determine its causes and origins. By gaining an understanding of the problem, Garbarino hopes to be able to ascertain some sort of solution. He provides useful advice and insight about steps we as a society can take to ensure our boys do not become lost. In order to develop Garbarino’s ideas in my mind, I thought it would be interesting to apply some of his points he makes in his book to a case. I chose to write on the two main characters, Derek and Danny, in the movie American History X. I will provide a brief summary of the movie, followed by an extensive examination of the characters, using Lost Boys as a critical lens. First I will discuss the importance of viewing the boys lives in their entirety rather that isolating one incident. I will then look at the risk factors and the racial implications involved in Derek and Danny’s life. The next two sections will focus on the lack of a father figure and the powerful influence Derek has as a result of the absence of a father. Then I devote a short section to Garbarino’s idea of affirmation instead of discrimination and how this could have helped Derek and Danny. Before concluding, I take into account psychologist James Gilligan’s ideas on violence and how they apply to this case. In my conclusion, I look at Garbarin...
Davis, Jane. "Notes Of A Native Son." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-4. Literary Reference Center. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.
When an individual is being discriminate by their own race he or she will have a sense of lost on where they belong because their own race does not see you as one of their own yet you have the same character or experience as them. McClain is one of the victim “whites won’t believe I remain culturally different; black won’t believe I remain culturally the same.” She does not and cannot pick white or black side because they both hated her. In the quotes “I have fulfilled the entry requirements of the American middle-class, yet I am left, at times, feeling unwelcome and stereotyped” McClain explain how lower-class African American hated her for her success and it broke her heart that her own race not accepting her for whom she is and other race discriminated her for being black. Being that much hated by her own race will eventually overwhelm her and she committed suicide because of
Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story, but give significance as well. The point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel. The author chooses to write the novel through the eyes of the main character and narrator, Jack. Jack’s perception of the world is confined to an eleven foot square room.
There were buildings set on fire and stores looted in a cry of anger and the need for social justice. However, these riots caught national and global attention. As King states in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, “.... an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.” With Trayvon’s death a term was coined and for a short time “Black Lives Matter” circled the nation. It was not until another child, Michael Brown, was gunned down by Officer Darren Wilson that the term truly caught fire and spread. Three words, fifteen letters hold so much meaning but unfortunately many people of all races only see the surface value of these words. These words go beyond the black lives that seem to only matter to the media. The Oprahs and Michael Jacksons of the world are of equal importance to little Shaniqua and Tommy in Decatur, Georgia and people fail to see that. Jussie Smollett, actor, stated on a visit to NBCBLK that, “You cannot pick and choose when Black lives
Into the wild is a non-fiction book which expanded from the nine-thousand-word article by Jon Krakauer. This article ran in the January 1993 issue of the magazine Outside. Jon Krakauer was very much drawn toward the tale of McCandless and decided to write his story. He spent more than a year tracking down the details of the boy’s tramp. Then he used matter-of-fact tones to narrate what he chased on the path about the boy. The framework presented in this book can be separated into three parts: (1) retracing, including the interview with most of the important people who once kept company with Chris; (2) wildness, presenting mails generated from readers and several idealists that were in the similar situation with Chris; (3) affection, including the memory of parents, sister and friends.
Chapman, Jeff and John D. Jorgenson, eds. "Tan, Amy." Contemporary Authors Vol.54. Detroit: Gale, 1997.
Throughout, the documentary one can come to the conclusion that most of these African- Americans who live in this area are being judged as violent and bad people. However this is not the case, many of them are just normal people who are try...
While Wilkins was studying at the university, there was a brutal lynching of a black man in Duluth, Minnesota. The episode had a profound effect on the dire...