Angela's Ashes
Irish poverty chronicle
Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's 1996 memoir of his impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland.
The title refers to the ashes from the coal fire that his mother Angela tended, and to her cigarette ashes—both symbols of the family's grinding poverty.
The book won the Pulitzer Prize and became synonymous with Irish-American hardship narratives: It's like something out of Angela's Ashes.
- memoirWritten personal recollection
- IrelandNorth Atlantic island republic
- povertySevere lack of resources
- hungerNeed for nourishment
- CatholicPapal church adherent
misery memoir · Catholic Church · rain · typhoid · slums · childhood · coming of age · famine · Great Depression · emigration · tenement · pub · confession · priest · tuberculosis · damp · coal · dole
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