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The Son Also Rises
Frank McCourt’s love affair with language, and how it saved him
by Kate Bernhardt
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 Growing up, Frank McCourt didn’t imagine that he’d ever be rich and famous. He would happily have settled for a full stomach on a regular basis, dry, clean shelter, and shoes to protect his feet from the wet winters of Limerick, Ireland. Yet rich and famous he now is thanks to Angela’s Ashes, his memoir of growing up poor in Limerick.
"When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all," he writes in the book's first paragraphs. "People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty, the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father, the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire, pompous priests, bullying schoolmasters, the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years."
That’s McCourt’s voice -- wry and precise -- and in that voice he tells a remarkable story of grit and determination, illuminated by a very few flashes of good luck that enabled him to overcome circumstances that would have flattened most of us. The book has sold millions of copies internationally, earning McCourt a Pulitzer Prize and a place at the tables of glamour and power all over the world. For a year, he says, he didn’t eat dinner at home at all -- instead, he dined at the White House, had cocktails with ambassadors, and rubbed elbows with "A list" movie stars at every premiere that came to town. Despite the acclaim and activity, McCourt kept writing. He’s now putting the finishing touches on his second book, 'Tis, which picks up where Angela’s Ashes left off, with McCourt, just 19 years old, newly landed on American soil, headed for New York City.
'Tis tells the story of the immigrant experience through McCourt’s eyes, and holds his passion for teaching at its heart. Teaching, he says, "saved me in more ways than one. It's very rare that a teacher comes out of the shadows and gets this kind of recognition. You know, 30 years as a teacher, nobody paid me a scrap of attention. Now I have a voice. Now I can talk about schools and teaching, and they might listen."
In his ZineZone interview, Frank McCourt talks about schools and teaching. He also talks about marriage (how hard it is to get right), odd jobs (a story that involves dead birds), and the bridge between songs and poetry (you probably know lots of the former and few of the latter).
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On video: Meet Irish-American raconteur Frank McCourt.
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Frank McCourt
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