In Memoriam - Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt, author of the memoirs Angela's Ashes, 'Tis and Teacher Man, died Sunday, July 19 at 78 in New York City. He had suffered from metastatic melanoma, according to the New York Times, which has a long obituary.

On scanning the obituaries, it seems to me that all writers highlight McCourt's gifts as a consummate storyteller. I remember how, when Angela's Ashes came out in 1996, people would recount to each other anecdotes from the book. They would laugh and cry at the same time at tales of Frank McCourt's growing up in grinding poverty in Ireland: some of the incidents in his life are shocking and tragic and yet told so outrageously and engagingly that they are funny and very human.

Here are links to Frank McCourt's memoirs in our catalog:
Angela's Ashes
'Tis
Teacher Man

Frank McCourt also co-authored some books:
Ireland ever / photographs by Jill Freedman ; texts by Frank McCourt and Malachy McCourt
Brotherhood / text by Tony Hendra; introduction by Frank McCourt
"A lively introduction by Frank McCourt reflects on the civil connection we feel with firefighters...."

And he wrote fiction:
Angela and the baby Jesus / by Frank McCourt
"When my mother, Angela, was six years old, she felt sorry for the Baby Jesus in the Christmas crib at St. Joseph's Church near School House Lane where she lived.... * * * *Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela's Ashes is a modern classic. Now he has written a captivating Christmas story about Angela as a child -- often cold and hungry herself -- compelled to rescue the Baby Jesus and take him home."

Julia Blackburn's The Three of Us won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for memoir and autobiography.

Julia Blackburn's The Three of Us won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for memoir and autobiography. Find this book in our catalog

Jacket notes: "The Three of Us is a memoir like no other you have read."

This is what is says in the Summary in our catalog: "This is the story of three people: Julia Blackburn; her father, Thomas; and her mother, Rosalie. Thomas was a poet and an alcoholic who for many years was addicted to barbiturates, which would often make him violent. Rosalie, a painter, was sociable and flirtatious; she treated Julia as her sister, her confidante, and eventually as her deadly sexual rival. After Julia’s parents divorced, her mother took in lodgers, always men, on the understanding that each would become her lover. When one of the lodgers started an affair with Julia, Rosalie was devastated; when he later committed suicide, the relationship between mother and daughter was shattered irrevocable. Or so it seems until the spring of 1999, when Rosalie, diagnosed with leukemia, came to live with Julia for the last month of her life. At last the spell was broken, and they were able to talk with an ease they had never known before. When she was very near the end, Rosalie said to Julia, “Now you will be able to write about me, won’t you?” The Three of Us is a memoir like no other you have read. The writing is magical, and the story is extraordinary, not only for its honest but also for its humor and its lack of blame. Ultimately, this is a tale of redemption, a love story. It will surely become one of the classics of that genre. From the Hardcover edition."

Read more about the PEN/Ackerley Prize...

Grace After Midnight: a memoir by Felicia "Snoop" Pearson and David Ritz

Grace After Midnight: A Memoir, by Felicia “Snoop” Pearson and David Ritz. Find this book in our catalog

If you like celebrity memoirs, you may still want to approach this one with a degree of trepidation. Felicia Pearson played Snoop in The Wire, and in real life she was pretty much the same as on screen, even down to her nickname “Snoop.” Born a crack baby in Baltimore City, Pearson was raised by a loving foster family, but her neighborhood was too great an influence to keep her safe from drugs and violence. Becoming a dealer herself, she felt she was prospering in her own distorted way, but when she killed a woman, she landed in prison for several years. Serving time in prison and the death of some of those close to her led Snoop to an epiphany about her life and the direction she was headed. That and one break would make all the difference. Grace after Midnight reveals a life of hardship and bad choices but also what can come, when finally that left-for-lost person gets the opportunity she needs, that one break that leads a lost person to a far better life.

Submitted by D. L. S.

Conversation with author, David Matthews

Apologies for the shortness of the notice: I have been out sick for a week and just saw the press release for this event myself this morning. I thought it was worth drawing to your attention, however - it sounds like a pleasant way to spend an hour or so at lunch time.

David Matthews, author of Ace of Spades, will discuss his memoir of growing up in segregated 1980s Baltimore as the white-looking son of a Black Nationalist father and a Jewish mother on Tuesday, September 9 from 11:30 am – 1:30 pm at the HCC student center.
Stay for lunch and conversation with the author for a $10.00 fee. Call 410-836-4176 for registration information.

Find this book in our catalog. Here is a summary of the book from our catalog: ""When David Matthew's mother abandoned him as an infant, she left him with white skin and the rumor that he might be half Jewish. For the next twenty years, he remained torn between his actual life in the ghetto of 1980s Baltimore and the world of white privilege he imagined." "Forced to choose between black and white, he took what seemed to him the path of least resistance: he adopted the snarky persona of his well-to-do Jewish classmates, whose lives seemed so much easier than his own. And when his father moved them into a dilapidated house in the heart of the ghetto, Matthews's light skin was suddenly no longer an easy way out: it was a liability. Haunting his every misadventure, from cross burning to drug deals gone awry, was his helplessness to forget the mother he never knew."

See also our catalog for reviews of the book and first chapter excerpts.