ipl-logo

Summary Of All Souls By Patrick Macdonald

700 Words3 Pages

Patrick Macdonald’s book All Souls memoir paints a vivid picture of life in South Boston, known colloquially as Southie, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The memoir offers a raw and unfiltered window into a neighborhood rampant with crime, violence, drugs, and death. What is shown is not just a narrative of survival but also a deep exploration of the neighborhood's collective denial, a coping mechanism that, while offering temporary comfort, ultimately continues a cycle of harm and prevents meaningful long-term change. We know Southie has a tendency for denial from the very beginning of the novel, “We didn’t want to own the problems that took the lives of my brothers and of so many others like them: poverty, crime, drugs— those were black things that …show more content…

One final instance where the community is in denial is when Southie finds out that Whitey was actually an informant working for the FBI, “And the whole neighborhood tried to shield itself from the ugly truth. Which one among us wanted to believe that the man who’d epitomized the Southie code, who’d mouthed the familiar words about loyalty that we desperately wanted to be true, would turn out to be the biggest snitch of all? Kevin Cullen at the Globe had been working on stories since 1988 suggesting that Whitey Bulger was one of the FBI’s “most prized informants”(222). Having these other examples of denial in Southie allows the reader to truly understand why the community was easily able to slip into denial surrounding Whitey’s role in the violence and death that took so many young lives in Southie. It was second nature, a coping mechanism, if they didn’t believe it it must not be

Show More
Related
1067 Words | 5 Pages

The murder of Henry Marrow in 1970 was not one of those events. Tyson knew of the racism and the control the KKK had over his town. This book tells of the story of this murder’s impact on a small town in North Carolina known as Oxford, North Carolina. Blood Done Sign My Name is an autobiography that gives insight on how impactful racism was in Southern small towns during the 1960s and 1970s. Even though this book was being told through the eyes of someone experiencing these events, the story is not told through all perspectives of what was transpiring in this

Read More
926 Words | 4 Pages

But why is it that so many, if not the majority, of the news stories involve members of they city’s African-American poor? In Tom Dents’ play, Ritual Murder, he tries to uncover the reasoning behind why so many of New Orleans poor African-American citizens

Read More
1529 Words | 7 Pages

Karen Fields presents a plethora of “stories” or oral recollections of history posited by her grandmother for inclusion in a memoir titled Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir. These “stories” as Grandmother Fields calls them provide us with insights into what life was like for a black person in Charleston, South Carolina during the era of Jim Crow in the South. The act of remembering the past, those memories that individuals hold with them as they travel through life, provides us with an encapsulated view of what living was like to them for a specific period. However, these “stories” are not substantial enough to understand the complexities of history in its entirety on its own. Oral histories and personal recollections vary between

Read More
750 Words | 3 Pages

In the nonfiction novel, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” American author, John Berendt, gives his account of a 1981 murder case that took place in Savannah, Georgia. Even though during the 1980s, United States as a whole is heading towards prosperity as the Cold War ends in 1981, he repeatedly touches back on the undercurrent southern racism. Berendt draws a vivid picture of Southern Gothic weirdness to convey, using real life occurrences and characters, the idea of what kind of people exist in the community to readers of all places. The writer uses rhetorical devices such as description, foreshadowing, and dysphemism to successfully depict the occurrences in suspenseful yet humorous tone.

Read More
1718 Words | 7 Pages

The state of Black life in Canada is the outcome of long time neglect and dehumanization. The main issues presented throughout the book were those associated with race, crime and gender; and have occurred throughout time, and still exist today. Maynard’s book tells the horrific stories of Black life and experiences in Canada, addresses a many issues, and focuses on the harsh realities faced by the Black community due reoccurring anti-Black practices and

Read More
1311 Words | 6 Pages

They were there with their tongues cocked and loaded” (185-186). Even though Janie was judged in front of both races--black and white--she was unexpectedly dismissed by her own black community. The black townspeople of Eatonville in the trial relates back to the porch, since both communities rejection and judgment of Janie are deeply ingrained in internalized racism. As someone who is supposed to be a part of the black community, one would expect that Janie would have the full support of the townspeople, especially during the Jim Crow era. However, because of envy, judgment, and self-hate, the black community is so divided, that even in one’s worst times, they will doubt them and be unsupportive in order to feed their own dignity.

Read More
1021 Words | 5 Pages

The people interviewed in the documentary relay that being a black person was a mortifying experience in the southern section of North America. In 1957, Howell Raines witnessed Fred Shuttlesworth getting beaten with chains by a group of white men (Lee, 1997, 43:22). Once the police arrived and claimed they couldn’t find the criminals, Howell Raines claimed in his interview to have recognized one of the perpetrators. Raines informed Lee that the perpetrator was always at a local restaurant called “Jack Cash’s Barbeque” and Howell “...knew the police hung out at Jack Cash's barbecue and I knew they were lying” (Lee, 1997, 43:51). Many loved ones of the girls expressed their feelings towards having to explain racist issues to their kids.

Read More
1157 Words | 5 Pages

The dissemination of such folk sayings reveals the commonalities of the southern African American experience. However, most African Americans were unable to afford landownership and so remained stuck in the familiar dynamic of white supremacy. The few who could moved to urban centers, signaling the beginning of the Great Migration. However, racism was not confined to one region in America and African Americans nationwide continued to experience racially motivated discrimination and violence (Doc 4). Racial violence was

Read More
157 Words | 1 Pages

“’Can You Be BLACK and Look at This’: Reading the Rodney King Video(s)” by Elizabeth Alexander is a powerful analysis into the deep rooted sense of community felt by people who identify as Black, with specific regards to the videotaped police beating of Rodney King; and also examines the deep rooted White stereotypes surrounding people of color in America, more notably in the judicial system. This essay details the unity and solidarity seen in the times, not only surrounding the Rodney King videos, but also surrounding other notable stories about Black violence, such as the murder of Emmett Till, and the stories of Fredrick Douglass, to name a few. It describes in detail the horrible acts committed on Black bodies, and references numerous movements

Read More
722 Words | 3 Pages

It was not easy being a free person of color in Boston because of the verbal abuse and terrorization of women. Twenty-three years later, the treatment of African Americans in Boston shows little change. “…cuts and placards descriptive of the Negro deformity, are everywhere displayed…” Hosea Easton (Document I). Although slavery was abolished in the North, states still did not want to deal with the freed slaves. Their only solution was to eliminate them from the picture completely.

Read More
615 Words | 3 Pages

He speaks about the story of Clyde Ross, a black man who fled horrible conditions in Mississippi to find work in Chicago. Like many Americans Ross dreamed of owning a home. However, the only way for a black person to buy a home in Chicago in the mid-twentieth century was to buy from predatory “contract” sellers who charged unbillable rates with few legal protections for buyers. Clyde said “To keep up with his payments and keep his heat on, I took a second job at the post office and then a third job delivering pizza.” Like many blacks in Chicago at the time he got two jobs just to keep up with the payments of the house, overall being kept away from his

Read More
911 Words | 4 Pages

After the British and French war, Peters’s family, hundred members of the Black Guides and Pioneers evacuated from New York to Nova Scotia. However, “in Nova Scotia the dream of life, liberty, and happiness became a nightmare. Some 3,000 ex-slaves found that they were segregated in impoverished villages, given small scraps of often untillable land, desprived of rights normally extended to British subjects, and reduced to peonage by a white population whose racism was as congealed as the frozen winter soil of Nova Scotia.” (Nash 7). At this new place, African Americans were treated really badly.

Read More
1311 Words | 6 Pages

Tally’s Corner is the sociological interpretation of the culture of Negro streetcorner men. Elliot Liebow sets out to expose the hypocrisies that lead black men in this circumstance. The study is carried out in Washington D.C. The key argument posed by Liebow is that black males are incapable of attaining jobs because they lack education. He also argues that this is a cycle that inevitably results in a trans-generational marginalization of the black race.

Read More
1348 Words | 6 Pages

However, the outcome of Vance’s life was different as he was graduated from Yale Law School, able to get a well-paying job and currently living the American Dream with his wife Usha. The purpose of the author in this memoir was to understand the reader of how social mobility feels and more importantly, what happens to the lives of the white working-class Americans, in particular the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. J.D Vance provides an explanation for the loss of the American dream to poor white Americans living in a toxic culture in this Ohio steel town.

Read More
2141 Words | 9 Pages

An Examination of the Russian Upper Class Through the Lens of Gogol’s Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls is a satirical criticism of the early 19th century Russian character and mentality. In the novel, the reader follows the protagonist, Chichikov, who is attempting to purchase “dead souls” in order to achieve his dream of owning his own estate. However, the focus of the novel is not on the plot, which does not really exist in the traditional sense of a novel, but rather on Gogol’s depiction of Russian life and people through a highly comical lens. Chichikov attempts to purchase “dead souls” from various landowners, all of whom highlight various negative characteristics of the Russian gentry. By following Chichikov, who is not exactly a respectable character, the reader is exposed to the lives and

Read More

More about Summary Of All Souls By Patrick Macdonald

Open Document