Angela´s Ashes: poverty and childhood

"When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth living. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish catholic childhood". (Frank McCourt, author of Angela´s Ashes)

Can you imagine being born in Depression era Brooklyn and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland?

This is the life of Frank McCourt as told in his memoir, "Angela´s Ashes" . He brings you inside the mind of a miserable Irish catholic child whose life would seem unbelievable to most of us today.

Before he reaches the age of ten, Francis witnesses the death of his sister and two brothers. His father hardly ever works and when he does, he spends it on alcohol. Through all the poverty, near starvation and harassment, Frank and his family remain strong in spirit. Angela´s Ashes is a story of survival, the survival of a mother who has to carry on with a family by her own begging for food, clothes and money to the charity; the survival of the brothers living his childhood in the streets of the greyish Limerick and after all the survival of the oldest son, Frank, who has to work in order to maintain his family playing his father´s role.

However, there is nothing Ireland can offer to him, so he takes the difficult decision of going to America where he could find a good opportunity to live.... But that´s another book and a different story! (Silvia Rodríguez, 2º Bachillerato)