By April Drew

Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming Up from Under

By Michael Patrick MacDonald (Houghton Mifflin)

Book Review

WITH a name like Easter Rising, one could easily assume that the latest book from Michael Patrick MacDonald is yet another rendition of how a small crew of armed revolutionists declared Ireland a Republic in 1916, otherwise known in the history books as the Easter Rising. Thankfully, we are spared the history lesson.

Easter Rising is MacDonald’s memoir touching on his childhood encounters while growing up in an Irish Catholic enclave of South Boston’s Old Colony housing project. He exposes an unruly youth who creates an identity for himself outside the projects and rejects everything he comes from, including his Irish identity.

He delves deep into the 1980s punk era for reassurance and diversion, but eventually awakens to shame and rejects it all. He takes two trips to Ireland where his life finally seems to fall back into place.

MacDonald comes from a family of nine children, born to different fathers. His mother, a quaint woman born to Irish immigrants, played the accordion for her neighbors to supplement her welfare checks.

MacDonald’s memoir is filled with dramatic memories of the death of his brothers, specifically Davey’s suicide, Frankie’s murder and Kevin’s hanging.

As a young teenager, MacDonald was always looking for ways to flee “Southie.” He would follow his older brother Kevin, who he regarded as “the boss,” into Boston City to escape the reality and shame of where he lived.

It was on one of these trips that he discovered his zeal for music. As a teenager in the late 1970s, he instantly identified with the brassy punk-rock scene. His idols became the Sex Pistols and Elvis Costello.

Music sheltered Mac-Donald from his feelings and supplied him with an escape route from the callous realities of life in South Boston. In some ways music may have saved him from his bleak life in the projects. He became a punk and struck-up a friendship with a Goth.

He was called every class of name in Southie, but he was pleased that he stood out. He belonged to music, its influence and its style, and hated anything that could possibly make him normal.

It wasn’t until his sister went into a coma that MacDonald realized that other issues in life carried more weight than his fixation for music.

As Southie got shoddier with more stabbings, shootings and drugs, MacDonald needed to get away more often. He would get on a bus and head for New York; other times he would go to his grandpa’s house at the nicer end of Southie.

“Grandpa helped me through my anxiety and sense of doom after Frankie’s and Kevin’s deaths by admitting to me his

own nervousness in his teenage years before he fled to America,” writes MacDonald.

It was when Frankie was murdered that MacDonald wanted more than anything to be a part of Old Colony again.

“I wanted to be Old Colony, from the shell-toe aides to the buttoned-up Izard shirt that at one time felt like a straight jacket,” he writes.

Right through the book, MacDonald is relentlessly looking for his identity. It wasn’t until he made a trip to Ireland when he was 19 that he discovered his Irish roots.

There he embraced his heritage and realized the connection with his community back in Boston. His life ultimately started to fall into place. It was a second trip he took with his “Ma” that concluded his quest.

I have mixed feelings about the book. At the beginning I felt MacDonald drawing me in like a vacuum, but without being given a chance to connect with the character, I found myself blown back out by the recurrent mention of music. Maybe this was MacDonald’s intention.

What did keep me afloat throughout were his memories of his Irish grandparents and his visits to Ireland. All in all, not a bad read.