All Souls: A Family Story from Southie

Michael Patrick McDonald tells in his book his and his family's life in one of the most notorious housing projects in America, South (Southie) Boston. A neighborhood his mother after they lived with her abusive husband Mac, lost one son to no health insurance, having her eldest use his lunch box as a weapon to fight black kids in the neighborhood while coming home from school, and chasing and fighting with her neighbors for their kids stealing from her children dreamed of getting to live in. Then an arrogant judge ordered that schools in Southie be integrated and nowhere else in the Boston public school system, which touched off busing riots, mass dropping out of students from schools in the neighborhood, and a contempt for all recognizable authority. All fertile soil for senator Billy Bulger to make a constituency and for his brother James "Whitey" Bulger to cultivate and maintain a criminal empire. The neighborhood riddled with drugs, ignorance, and corruption. The end result was mob or familiarly reprisals for any and all slights imagined or real. McDonald lost his one brother Frank "The Tank" when he tried to rob an armored car, his sister Kathy after coming out of a coma after being thrown or falling from a roof became schizophrenic, his older brother Davey suffering from schizophrenia succumbed and committed suicide, his criminal brother Kevin executed or committed suicide in prison he and his mother don't know which. All of this prompted McDonald to become an activist and community organizer fighting for not just equality but for justice and recognition that issues from suicide, addiction, and gangsterism were destroying their city as a whole. All Souls is a thought provoking memoir that will leave you with much to think about, and question your loyalties.

Everyone who grew up with a mother and father in their home, a paycheck coming in, and home cooked food on the table needs to read this. I came from the same generation, and had a very different upbringing and never saw this kind of poverty until I was an adult. The author paints the picture of his childhood with a wide brush. He takes you into his home, shows you how he survived in different situations, and how his world worked. A fascinating look into his past, and an opportunity to open your mind to others in their particular world, which might be the opposite of yours. Somehow the author managed to make it in this dead end of dead ends. An intelligent young man with a lot of savvy, he tells a tale of bullets flying, cons, beloved characters, fools, roaches, and a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else's business. I wish I could have shared my Easter basket haul with him back in the day, and I wish him well. A good read.

For a young man in his thirties, Michael Patrick MacDonaldexhibits a rare strong, intelligent, probing voice in thisautobiography of his childhood in the forced-busing 1970's SouthBoston. Readers learn that poverty and tragedy, caused by or atleast exacerbated by Southie's own destructive code of silence and theFBI's refusal to prosecute the 'hood's mafia chief/purveyor ofdrugs/booze/weapons, end up devastating Southie and the author'sfamily. He loses 4 siblings to crime or discrimination. This is NOTa depressing book. It is uplifting in the sense that Angela's Asheswas: the author writes most of the time from his childhood perspective-- one that doesn't know any other world but the one in which he isliving. The family went out of their way to NOT look poor, to thepoint where they would buy shop-lifted designer clothes from a Southie"fence" so that they could look as fashionable as everyoneelse, despite the fact that their mother was a "career"welfare mom. MacDonald has said in interviews that in large part hisbook is about the denial of their poverty and immersion in thedrug/weapon culture he wants readers to understand. There's much, muchmore. I am a Masters student in American & New England Studiesand had to read this book for a class called Ethnicity in America. Ifyou have one book to choose to give you a perspective on how the Irish"assimilated" to the Boston scene, choose this one. Youwon't be able to put it down.

This piece of literature has it all: it's moving, riveting, gripping, and revealing; and it's very well written. The author's clearly a talented story teller, and he's very courageous to put this revealing story of his family's tragic experiences in the public domain. Michael MacDonald(and Ma) should be commended just for that courage, not even considering his literary talents. I can't imagine the level of pain he endured writing it because of the pain I felt just reading it. The book's emotional spectrum runs the whole gamut from sadness, grief, and despair to sheer hilartity...there's that Irish wit and humor throughout.I strongly recommend this book to anyone and everyone in our American society. The story had to be told: it's poverty and class, folks, not race! Whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc., whatever ethnic or racial group there is, those at the poor end of the specrum will suffer until society changes."All Souls" teaches us that. Hopefully we'll learn from this marvelous work, and things will improve.Like Michael, I'm someone born and brought up in a Southie housing project(The Old Harbor Village), albeit some 25 years earlier. I was luckier than Michael and his siblings because I had two parents, and drugs and guns were virtually nonexistent in Southie's projects in the 40's, 50's, and early 60's when I was there. However, I can identify with and testify to the existence of "Southie Pride", and the insular nature of "The Town", that "us versus the rest of the world" mentality. Combine that with the forced busing saga produced by a self-serving state legislature which passed laws to insure their lily-white towns wouldn't be affected by busing, and a judge from Wellesley who didn't have a clue, along with extreme poverty, organized crime controlling Southie ,an incompetent and/or corrupt police force, a similarly corrupt local FBI contingent, guns, drugs, and booze pouring in uninhibited by law enforcement, and lo and behold, you have the perfect formula for the disaster that ensued, the anger, hate, despair, misery, grief, the premature deaths, suicides, murders, ODs' etc, the exacerbation of Southie's natural introversion! Thanks to this wonderful book, the story is out there,and the healing process has begun.I really hope all of America reads the book, especially those non-Southies who live in Boston and its environs. I guarantee you will all change your perspective of Southie afterwards. I would also recommend that "All Souls" be mandatory in the high school English courses of the Boston Public School system, as well as those across the country. There'a a major lesson to be learned here.Michael MacDonald..Thank you for your story, and I'll be waiting for to write more!

Comparing All Souls to Frank McCourt, is like reviewing a film by an African American director and having to mention Spike Lee. All Souls stands on its own. It uses a brilliantly unique voice, with its own intention for the world. MacDonald and McCourt are both Irish and grew up poor, but MacDonald's book, rather than being another beautiful romanticised memoir about a safely distant Irish poverty of the past, is distinctly about American poverty and life in a contemporary urban ghetto. Unlike Angela's Ashes, poor kids in the South Bronx who are Black and Latino can read MacDonald's account of growing up in an Irish housing project, and know exactly what he is talking about. Because this book, more than being about anything Irish, is about class in contemporary America. All Souls' straight-forward use of irony and humor makes for a beautiful read that can teach us all how to live, and encourage us all to work for change in our racist AND classist American society.

Claude Brown told it from an African American perspective thirty years ago. Now we have it from an Irish American perspective. Poor people, regardless of race, are used, manipulated and pitted against each other to the advantage of those in power. Still, in communities crushed down by poverty, crime, corruption, alcohol and drug abuse, some people will not let humanity be crushed out of them. As Viktor Frankel observed in the concentration camps some people will survive no matter how oppressive the conditions. I am glad Michael MacDonald survived to remind us of that fact again. This is a painful book to read. I found it compelling in a way I don't with Angela's Ashes (which I have my education students read). This is an important book and should not be considered as an Irish genre work any more than Brown's is Black genre. They both speak to the human condition in a way we need to hear more frequently, for our own humanity's sake.

I grew up in Dorchester which was on the other side of the tracks. Therefore, I already had something wrong with me should I venture to Southie. I was labeled an outsider and wouldn't dare go there alone even though I was white, Irish and Catholic. They were dangerous kids and if one of them accused you of looking at any of them the wrong way, that was enough for a gang beating. They were so full of anger and rage, and they could not ever form a sentence without using a slur of obsenities. I often wondered as a kid how these so called Irish Catholics could be so consumed with hate and venom not only against the rest of society, but towards each other as well. It never made sense to me. I am also Mike's cousin and even though we haven't seen each other since he was a kid, I always felt there was something different about Mike as compared to the rest of the pack. I did go to the apartment a couple of times and the atmosphere was exactly as he described it. Helen getting ready to go out with her accordian, the other tenant's yelling echoing in the halls, Mike at the window or watching TV and the endless metal door slamming from the coming and going activity. I was there for the Frank's funeral, he was a good guy who made a fatal error in judgement just looking for a way out. I also spent a little time with Kathy after her accident. A beautiful girl who loved to dance, now another statistic to the horrors of drugs. What might have been if she had grown up somewhere else is now just speculation. The family's pain was unbearable as one by one they were slipping away. They were caught up in a world of out of control madness with devastating consequences. Mike did an excellent job telling the truth for the most part. I recently drove through Patterson Way on a trip back home, and the sheer gloominess of the street is like a cemetary. It is so sad. For those of you who have read the book and might have wondered what happened to Nellie and her brood of fatherless children as Michael so eloquently pointed out, they all went on to further their educations and are responsible productive citizens. Morals and values begin at home, and what is most crucial to raising children is a loving and stable home that in some cases only the mother can provide. Helen just wouldn't leave, "The Best Place On Earth," under any circumstances. You be the judge of what can and cannot be accomplished raising children alone when you have your priorities in order.