All Souls Book Review Essay - 987 Words

All Souls: A Family Story From Southie 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†¦show more content†¦In a ‘He was a good man underneath all of that rage sort of fashion, he exposes Southies grave and serious problems, all the while maintaining that it was the best place in the whole world. We tend to marginalize the poor, the destitute, the food stamp and welfare recipients among us. We like to pretend that they are not there, much like the residents of Southie liked to pretend that the violence and anger and tragedy in Southie werent there. We like to try to compartmentalize this part of our own society, this very real set of people who still live in our towns. Who mourn their dead at our churches, who lower them into the ground in our cemeteries, who hand food stamps to the cashier at our grocery stores. We have all been guilty of it. How could we not be? How could we really grasp, realize, come to terms with, comprehend such an alien life? Michael Patrick MacDonald is our translator. He relays the past as Southie has written it on his heart. He hands it to us in a language we might better understand. MacDonald opens the door and invites us to sit down at his Southie dinner table. To lie on a mattress on the floor next to him and his brothers. To come to the hospita l and watch Ma MacDonald beat the daylights out of a man who didnt value her family as much as she did. To stand inside the sterile green walls at Mass Mental. To trade stories with all the Southie kids about who had a connection to Whitey Bulger. ToShow MoreRelatedA Controversial Issue Of Pi1093 Words   |  5 PagesA controversial issue for this book would definitely be the religion. Pi’s mother and father found it totally absurd to have more than one religion, and contradicting ones at that. As did the pandit, the priest, and the imam. In the book, there is a three-page long argument between the priest, the imam, the pandit, and Pi’s parents all claiming the other is mistaken and that Pi is a Muslim or a Hindu or a Christian. 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