JAC TALK with Michael Patrick MacDonald
Sunday, October 27, 4 pm
$5 General Admission
Join us for a discussion and signing with Michael Patrick MacDonald celebrating the 25th anniversary of his book All Souls.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
A breakaway bestseller when it first appeared in 1999, All Souls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald’s Southie, the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger’s drug schemes and school busing riots, MacDonald’s Southie is populated by sharply hewn characters like his Ma, a miniskirted accordion-playing single mother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children. Nearly suffocated by his grief and Southie’s code of silence, MacDonald tells his family story with gritty honesty and radiant insight. All Souls, a tale “as inspiring as it is haunting (Publishers Weekly), ultimately shares a powerful message of hope, renewal, and redemption.
Purchase a copy of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie today!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael Patrick MacDonald is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie. He grew up in South Boston's housing projects, which held the highest concentration of white poverty in the U.S. After losing four siblings and seeing his generation decimated by crime, addiction, and incarceration, he became a leading Boston organizer, helping to launch many anti-violence initiatives, including gun-buyback programs and support networks for survivors--all with the explicit goal of building multi-racial, class conscious coalitions of solidarity. He continues to work internationally with survivor families, educators, and organizers, using his trauma-informed restorative justice curriculum, The Rest of the Story.
All Souls won the American Book Award, a New England Literary Lights Award, and an Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. The book is assigned for Campus Reads at High Schools and Universities throughout the country. This year, All Souls was released as a 25th Anniversary New Edition with a new Afterword and tour. MacDonald is Professor of the Practice at Northeastern University's Honors Department, where he teaches Non Fiction Writing and Social Justice Issues as well as a course abroad studying peace-building in the North of Ireland through a decolonial lens. At Harvard University Summer School he teaches Storytelling and Global Justice, about the role of personal narratives in building movements for justice and healing.
He writes and speaks on topics ranging from race and class in America to transforming trauma, to voice, agency, and leadership and is currently writing his third book of narrative nonfiction