Tribute

I read in the newspaper today that the Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt is near death after a long battle with cancer. He is not expected to survive much longer and may have passed by the time you read this entry. This news made me really sad today. I have taught an excerpt from Angela's Ashes for several years now and have always boasted to the sophomores that they were hearing the real voice of a living author-that beautiful, lilting Irish brogue with the long,

wandering sentences.

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One of my most beloved books is his biographical work Teacher Man. EVERY teacher should read this work-no exceptions. It is graphically honest and unromantic, poignantly funny, and endearing. It speaks to the heart of why we continue to work in one of the toughest occupations on the planet.

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Read it-please. You won't regret it.

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from the author:

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Telling why he wrote about his childhood some six decades after he experienced it, Frank McCourt told C-Span Booknotes" host Brian Lamb in 1997: "I always wanted to be a writer, but I
didn't know that I wanted to write about this lane in Limerick,
 this slum. Because anybody that comes from those circumstances 
doesn't want to write about it. You're ashamed of it. You don't
 have any self-esteem. "So it wasn't 'til I somehow began to gain
 some approval or acceptance from my students in New York or from 
friends of mine … I started talking about growing up 
in Limerick and – I suppose some of the stuff I told them was amusing
 and they'd laugh because … poverty is so absurd."