Amy Ramirez: This Side of Brightness

In 1965, Colum McCann was born in Dublin, Ireland. After beginning his career as a journalist in The Irish Press, he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. He and his family moved to Japan for a year and a half and are now currently living in New York. McCann has been honored many awards throughout his years as a writer. His most recent is in 2009 with a French Chevalier des arts et lettres by the French government, making him recognized for his literary contributions. In May of 2009 he was also inducted into Aosdana, one of Irelands highest literary honors and the comparable of the Irish Academy; and in September of 2009 - the Deauville Festival of Cinema Literary Prize in Deauxville, France. Besides writing, he also contributed in making his short film, “Everything in this country Must,” which was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar in 2005. The Irish writer also teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program in New York.

In This Side of Brightness McCann brings two characters, who seem to have lived two totally separate lives in the beginning, intertwine in by the end of the novel. In class, we have already reviewed some characteristics that made them similar, such as working near the river, having a special tool always near, being some type of outcast, and many more. These similarities continue as the novel progresses through their encounters and struggles. McCann needed to do some research in order to really understand the struggles of what a homeless man and black man in the early term of the century had to go through. In the interview with McCann, he mentions how being Irish helped him with his research with the homeless because they saw him as an outsider like themselves. To them, his roots made him apart of the established order and system of America. When it came to researching what it was like to be a black man in the early term of the century, a difficulty arose for him in finding the same connection as he did with the homeless. One of the main things that kept the characters in the novel together is the setting. It begins from working to build the tunnel to living in them.

The blurb in the back of the book states how a single accident welds a bond between Walker and his colleagues that will both bless and curse three generations. It was difficult to seek out the blessings in this novel because there were so many negatives that were abrupt in each chapter from death, drug addiction, and racism. Like many other pieces we have read, this too shows more negative aspects that come from the underground. Issues of what positives came from this novel, how people cope with physical and emotional pain, and how “resurrection” is foreseen throughout the book are all topics that can be explored.