Ma, I'm Gettin Meself a New Mammy

Ma, I'm Gettin Meself a New Mammy
Author: Martha Long
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Abused teenagers
ISBN: 9781845964498

In this second volume of Martha Long's memoirs, aged 13, Martha is rescued by the courts from the clutches of her evil stepfather, Jackser and her feckless mother, Sally. After numerous arrests for shoplifting, a judge rules that she is to be sent to a convent school with the instruction that she is to get an education.

Ma, I'm Gettin Meself a New Mammy

Ma, I'm Gettin Meself a New Mammy
Author: Martha Long
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2011-12-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1907195076

Aged thirteen, Martha is rescued by the courts from the clutches of her evil stepfather, Jackser, and her feckless mother, Sally. After numerous arrests for shoplifting, a judge rules that she is to be sent to a convent school with the instruction that she is to get an education. Her initial relief at escaping the abuse and neglect she suffered at home is, however, short-lived, as she soon realises that there are many forms of cruelty in this life. As she says, 'You can have a full belly, but your heart can be very empty.' Ostracised by the other children for being a 'street kid' and put to back-breaking work by the nuns, she leads a lonely existence, her only joy coming from the books she devours and her mischievous sense of humour. Desperate for love and a little place where she feels she belongs, despite all that she has suffered Martha retains her compassion for others and still continues to hope for a brighter future when she will be free to make her own way in life.

Ma, I've Got Meself Locked Up in the Mad House

Ma, I've Got Meself Locked Up in the Mad House
Author: Martha Long
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Dublin (Ireland)
ISBN: 9781780575414

Martha is now in her thirties. She has long shaken off the shackles of Jackser and her mother. Following a shotgun wedding at 18, she was separated and a single mother by 22. Now her daughter has left home to continue her studies in England and Martha is alone, in bad health, lonely and vulnerable.

I'm Glad My Mom Died

I'm Glad My Mom Died
Author: Jennette McCurdy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1982185821

A memoir by American former actress and singer Jennette McCurdy about her career as a child actress and her difficult relationship with her abusive mother who died in 2013

Ma, It's a Cold Aul Night an I'm Lookin for a Bed

Ma, It's a Cold Aul Night an I'm Lookin for a Bed
Author: Martha Long
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2015-04-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1609805992

The next installment of the Ma books—all bestsellers in Ireland and the UK—brings readers on the journey of Martha's first months of freedom in Dublin after leaving the convent where she spent her early adolescence. In the latest chapter of Martha Long's autobiographical series, Martha is for the first time on her own: discharged from the convent, she's finally 16, the age she'd long dreamed of as the doorway to her freedom from the whims of cruel adults. "Life is a bowl of cherries!" she reasons as she sets out to blend in with the middle classes and find love, acceptance, and respect therein. But this is also Dublin in the 1960s, where class aspirations ain't so easy for the likes of Martha. As one job and bedsit is found (and lost), another soon comes along with its own foibles and dangers . . . but with her signature spirit and true grit, Martha makes the best of every situation and manages to offer compassion even to the most downtrodden of characters who cross her path. Chance meetings with old friends from the convent and a fortuitous (yet brief) reunion with two of her brothers remind Martha of all she has experienced (and survived) and serves as the impetus for her to keep going . . . even when homelessness is all but certain. As with her previous books, Ma, It's a Cold Aul Night an I'm Lookin for a Bed has us cheering for Martha. This time she doesn't have any nuns or abusive stepfathers preventing her from making progress . . . but life does still get in the way, and that bowl of cherries sometimes proves to be a bit more sour than Martha would hope.

Ma, Jackser's Dyin Alone

Ma, Jackser's Dyin Alone
Author: Martha Long
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-05-08
Genre: Adult child abuse victims
ISBN: 9781780576770

On hearing that Jackser, her childhood abuser, is seriously ill, Martha is elated, thinking that finally she will be able to watch him suffer. But in the hospital she sees a frightened, lonely old man and realises with a shock that he seems to regret his earlier actions. During her vigil, she is joined by Charlie, her little brother, then her ma and some of her other siblings. But as she sits with Jackser during his dying days, other memories come back to Martha - fleeting moments of concern and kindness, and a sense of closeness as he recalls his own tormented past in one of Ireland's industrial schools.

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes

Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes
Author: Martha Long
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2008
Genre: Abused children
ISBN: 184596313X

Born a bastard to a teenage mother in the slums of 1950's Dublin, Martha grew up in squalid, freezing tenements, clothed in rags and forced to beg for food. Here she tells the story of her early life and recreates a lost era in which the shadow of the Catholic Church loomed large and if you didn't work, you didn't eat.

Run, Lily, Run

Run, Lily, Run
Author: Martha Long
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2014-10-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1473510325

Lilly and Ceily Carney are only seven and twelve when their mother is cruelly taken from them, leaving them at the mercy of the Church and the authorities. This is a terrifying prospect in 1950s Dublin, where it is likely that the girls will end up in one of Ireland’s notorious Magdalen laundries – a fate they are determined to escape. When Father Flitters and the ‘Cruelty’ people arrive to take the children into care, Lilly and Ceily resist, and a riot breaks out. The girls are helped by kind Mister Mullins and his daughter Delia, but events lead to further tragedy and Lilly is left to fend for herself on the dangerous streets. Heartbroken, hungry and vulnerable, she looks like easy prey and it seems there will be no safe haven for her to find.

Himself

Himself
Author: Jess Kidd
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501145193

A charming ne’er-do-well returns to his haunted Irish hometown to uncover the truth about his mother in this “supernaturally skilled debut” (Vanity Fair) and turns the town—and his life—upside down. Having been abandoned at an orphanage as a baby, Mahony assumed all his life that his mother wanted nothing to do with him. That is, until one night in 1976 while drinking a pint at a Dublin pub, he receives an anonymous note implying that she may have been forced to give him up. Determined to find out what really happened, Mahony embarks on a pilgrimage back to his hometown, the rural village of Mulderrig. Neither he nor Mulderrig can possibly prepare for what’s in store… From the moment he arrives, Mahony’s presence completely changes the village. Women fall all over themselves. The real and the fantastic are blurred. Chatty ghosts rise from their graves with secrets to tell, and local preacher Father Quinn will do anything to get rid of the slippery young man who is threatening the moral purity of his parish. A spectacular new addition to the grand Irish storytelling tradition, Himself “is a darkly comic tale of murder, intrigue, haunting and illegitimacy…wickedly funny” (Daily Express).

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?
Author: Séamas O'Reilly
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316424277

A heart-warming and hilarious family memoir of growing up as one of eleven siblings raised by a single dad in Northern Ireland at the end of the Troubles. Séamas O’Reilly’s mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten (!) brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble, but Séamas was more preoccupied with dinosaurs, Star Wars, and the actual location of heaven than the political climate. ­ An instant bestseller in Ireland, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? is a book about a family of loud, argumentative, musical, sarcastic, grief-stricken siblings, shepherded into adulthood by a man whose foibles and reticence were matched only by his love for his children and his determination that they would flourish. “In this joyous, wildly unconventional memoir, Séamas O'Reilly tells the story of losing his mother as a child and growing up with ten siblings in Northern Ireland during the final years of the Troubles as a raucous comedy, a grand caper that is absolutely bursting with life.”―Patrick Radden Keefe, NYT bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year