Description
In 1996, a retired New York City high school English teacher published a memoir that took the publishing world by storm. Angela’s Ashes, the story of Frank McCourt’s childhood in Ireland, was a bold account of poverty and family tragedy, suffused with humor and compassion.
Frank McCourt was suddenly an internationally celebrated memoirist, a writer who had invigorated the genre. But most readers didn’t know that Angela’s Ashes wasn’t Frank’s first published writing.
For years, he and his actor brother Malachy contributed a column to a neighborhood newspaper called The West Side Spirit. Malachy, himself a bestselling writer, also contributed to Our Town, Irish America, and The Southampton Review. And Frank went on to write for prominent publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, Life, and Rolling Stone.
Sez I to Myself collects the best of those essays and works of journalism. Here the brothers McCourt tackle parades and pubs, classrooms and churches, the immigrant experience, loss, 9/11, the writing life, and more.
This is a charming, tender, and insightful collection, a welcome new book from two masterful and much-loved writers.
Endorsements
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award