The Big Yank: Memoir of a Boy Growing Up Irish

Coming of age memoir about growing up in Ireland in the late 60's/early 70's. From the age of nine, the author was made smuggle food supplies from the North of Ireland into the South, in order to increase profits from his father's restaurant business. From there we are introduced to his Grandfather, a lovable rogue whose self-entertainment pranks know no bounds. Growing up in an impoverished family and era, the author was fairly much forced to cut his childhood short and assume a man's role on the family farm when his father's health failed. That did nothing to halt his penchant for coming up with completely unconventional methods of making a living, or places in which to live (a double-decker bus on the side of a Donegal mountain.) The reader is taken on a whirlwind adventure of life in Ireland without electricity or running water, where school clothes came out of brown parcels from an aunt in America and pets remained part of the family until it was time for them to be eaten.

Author: J. P. Sexton
Publisher: John Sexton
Published: 10/04/2016
Pages: 468
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.37lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.94d
ISBN13: 9780997900705
ISBN10: 0997900709
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- History | Europe | Ireland
- Family & Relationships | Dysfunctional Families

About the Author
The author and his two brothers were taken to Ireland from New York by their parents in the late 60's. No stranger to physical violence from "hands-on" parents, he had to face daily fights and ridicule whilst attending the all-boys Catholic National school in Donegal. While still an early teen, the author had to engage in back-breaking farm work when his father's failing health prevented him from carrying out the physical demands associated with life on a farm. The "all work and no play" lifestyle showed the author that he was not cut out for farming. Whether it was by flying planes for Aer Lingus, or giving donkey rides by the beach, he was determined to one day escape from his familial imprisonment.

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