Available:*
Material Type | Library | Call Number | Item Barcode | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Andover - Memorial Hall Library | BIOGRAPHY SILVA, OB. | 31330009120886 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Boxford Town Library | B SILVA | 32115002158259 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Lawrence Public Library | BIO SIL | 31549004912977 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Lowell - Pollard Memorial Library | B SILVA, O. | 31481005574756 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Middleton - Flint Public Library | B SILVA | 32126001842330 | Searching... Unknown |
| New books | Searching... North Reading - Flint Memorial Library | BIOGRAPHY SILVA, O. | 31550002480520 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Westford - J.V. Fletcher Library | B SILVA | 31990005056010 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A man mourning his alcoholic father faces a paradox: to pay tribute, lay scorn upon, or pour a drink. A wrenching, dazzling, revelatory debut
Weaving between the preparations for his father's funeral and memories of life on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Obed Silva chronicles his father's lifelong battle with alcoholism and the havoc it wreaked on his family. Silva and his mother had come north across the border to escape his father's violent, drunken rages. His father had followed and danced dangerously in and out of the family's life until he was arrested and deported back to Mexico, where he drank himself to death, one Carta Blanca at a time, at the age of forty-eight.
Told with a wry cynicism, a profane, profound anger, an antic, brutally honest voice, and a hard-won classical frame of reference, Silva channels the heartbreak of mourning while wrestling with the resentment and frustration caused by addiction. The Death of My Father the Pope is a fluid and dynamic combination of memoir and an examination of the power of language--and the introduction of a unique and powerful literary voice.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Silva braids the story of his father's death with tales of his own tumultuous life growing up between the United States and Mexico in his poignant debut. His father was an alcoholic who died at age 48 due to liver failure, a tragic ending that, to Silva, seemed inevitable. Though the death felt expected, Silva's anger and grief during the funeral did not. He recalls how his complex relationship with his father--who was "sometimes a sinner and sometimes a saint"--was saturated with love, abuse, and neglect: "He loved us in the way that only a sick man can love anybody: indelicately." With bluntness and dark humor, he reflects on the addictions and abuses that addled his childhood as he shuttled back and forth between his divorced parents' homes, from his mother's house in California to his father's in Chihuahua, Mexico--as well as his own dependencies on painkillers and cocaine as an adult. Silva also mourns places as much as people, creating a dynamic character out of his father's home and extended family in Chihuahua, where the "ever-polluting and sardine-packed piñata buses... undoubtedly bad for the lungs, but good for the spirit." This lyrical memoir offers an indelible look at the complicated ways grief, family, and addiction can intertwine. (Dec.)
Kirkus Review
A father's death opens deep wounds. Mexican-born Silva makes his book debut with a searing memoir of his alcoholic father and his own legacy of rage, drunkenness, and despair. Brought to California by his mother when he was 1, Silva grew up longing for his father's love and attention. During visits to Chihuahua or his father's rare visits to the U.S., he came to realize that the man was a drunk and a liar, "selfish" and "wickedly arrogant in his own ugly skin." Returning to Mexico for his father's funeral in 2009, Silva vented his anger at the man he describes as a "rolling stone" who "hated having to love; it was too heavy for his heart and so he fought against it to the end." He demeaned his sons, "often brutally beat and abused" his wife, and gave up on a career as an artist because he lacked the self-discipline to work at it. Back amid his family for the funeral, Silva recalls the rare times his father nurtured him: taking him fishing, to bullfights, to a swimming park. But those memories have always been overwhelmed by hurt. In trouble during his teenage years, when he was 17, Silva was shot in the course of a robbery. The bullet left his legs paralyzed, and during his months of hospitalization, his father never came to see him. Failing to get the love he desperately desired, Silva, like his father, drowned his pain in alcohol and drugs. His drinking ended his marriage. "I am the drunk man who drinks to not feel alone," he admits. "I am the drunk man who drinks to not feel at all." Yet from his mother, who pushed him to get an education and rescued him when he got into trouble, he inherited a steely resolve. He became two men, he writes: one, a drunk; the other, an inspiring college professor. Both are well captured here. A raw, probing narrative of pain. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
English professor Silva presents a heart-wrenching account of processing grief, or rather, a lack of grief. Upon hearing of his father's passing in Chihuahua, Mexico, Silva is tempted to stay in California, instead of acknowledging the death with a trip over the border. Though he and his mother fled north years ago to escape his alcoholic father's abusive behavior, it is ultimately Silva's mother who convinces him to make the journey and properly lay his relationship with his father to rest. Silva weaves his childhood experiences of his father's violence and of his immigrant experiences into the larger fabric of the man's lifelong battle with alcoholism. Unlike the glorification of father figures found in many memoirs, Silva delivers blunt truths of harm done. A portrait emerges of neither a god nor a monster, but rather of a man whose flaws deeply and irreparably hurt those he claimed to love. This is a necessary exploration of love, grief, addiction, abuse, and repair that reveals how closure can be found without an apology, and how relationships may become more complicated in death.
Library Journal Review
Silva's (English, East Los Angeles Coll.) debut memoir details the tumultuous and multi-layered relationships that can exist between parent and child. Interlacing scenes at his father's funeral with memories of his own past, Silva lifts the veil on his life with an alcohol-addicted father and his own struggles with addiction and trauma. Beautifully illustrating the conflicting feelings that can erupt between father and son, Silva describes the moment he sees his father's dead body for the first time. As Silva considers his father's life, he is compelled to take a closer look at his own behavior: he recounts the days he ran with a street gang, the consequences of which have impacted his life beyond measure as he grew up between the United States and Mexico. Like his father, Silva has an affinity for the creative arts, and he examines his life through the prism of literature. It is his love of the written word that propelled him to become a professor and writer himself. This is a memoir about learning to accept two truths at once; that a parent can be both a source of pain and a source of enduring love. VERDICT A ruthlessly honest memoir about the very complex emotions that can exist between parents and children. Recommended.--Megan Duffy, Brooklyn, NY