Dirtbag, Massachusetts
A Confessional
-
-
3.7 • 56 Ratings
-
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Winner of the New England Book Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Book of the Year
"The best of what memoir can accomplish... pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy." –Esquire, "Best Memoirs of the Year"
A TIME Must-Read Book of the Year * A Rolling Stone Top Culture Pick * A Publishers Weekly Best Memoir of the Season * A Buzzfeed Book Pick * A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Book * A Chicago Tribune Book Pick * A Boston.com Book You Should Read * A Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List
Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives-or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.
Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others.
Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Trying to figure yourself out isn’t easy, as Isaac Fitzgerald discovers in this brutally honest coming-of-age memoir. From being told by his mother at just eight years old that it might have been better if she’d aborted him to volunteering for a Christian relief organization in Burma to a stint in the porn industry, Fitzgerald really has seen it all. Focusing on key events in his life, he recounts these pivotal memories with sincerity and a delightfully dry wit. We were completely transfixed by Fitzgerald’s determination to know himself, accept his body, and transform his ideas about masculinity. This raw, gritty read is full of charming humor and deep vulnerability.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Fitzgerald (How to Be a Pirate) weaves a raucous mosaic of a rough-and-ready New England rarely seen with a transfixing story of his path to finding himself. In a series of essays, he recounts his impoverished childhood in 1980s Massachusetts and follows his escape from it through a litany of jobs and identities. In "Family Stories," he charts the "stained and tattered map" of his dysfunctional Catholic parent's lives and their bumpy road from "city poor to country poor." A poster child of the "classic New England family, incapable of discussing... things openly," Fitzgerald buried his past in drinking, drugs, and porn: "bonding relationships," he writes in "The Armory," "were based on the consumption of porn and communal jerking off." By his mid-20s, he was "on the other side" starring in pornos. As he takes readers along on his search for salvation, he barrels through many venues—from San Francisco to Southeast Asia to Brooklyn to Kilimanjaro—recounting the "conversations that changed me" and eventually helped him overcome old ideals of masculinity and untangle his complicity in a racist society (in his case, "hipster racism"). "To any young men out there who aren't too far gone," he writes. "I say you're not done becoming yourself." The result is a marvelous coming-of-age story that's as wily and raunchy as it is heartfelt.
Customer Reviews
Bootleg David Foster Wallace
Memoir by a millennial … but falls short in its account and delivery . Mildly entertaining and a very basic story of what it’s like to be a lower/ middle class white kid in New England. Given today’s narratives re: diversity , it’s hard to find this compelling as this specific story has been told many times before.