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Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional
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81/99
Critics
50/99
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Scholars
70/99
Rating
92/99
Volume
11/99
Rating
88/99
Volume
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About This Book
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.
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Reviews
"Painfully honest but sincerely funny ..."
"This negotiation between received 'truths' and capital-T Truth is the work of every memoir, one could argue, but Fitzgerald's project of openhearted self-interrogation still feels refreshing in a culture where men are socialized to bury their pain, or worse, turn it back on the world as misplaced resentment ..."
"There is much to marvel about in Isaac Fitzgerald's marvelous memoir-in-essays...But among its most noteworthy aspects is the fact that its author survived some of the events he describes long enough to write about them ..."
"He's a mesmerizing storyteller who deploys unexpected delights from his very first line ..."
"The result is a marvelous coming-of-age story that's as wily and raunchy as it is heartfelt."
"Fitzgerald unearths inspiration from dirtbags of all shapes and sizes, sharing it with sincerity and generosity."
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