Despite Frank McCourt's horrific poverty, tedious famine, and devastating losses, Angela's Ashes is not a tragic memoir. It's actually uplifting, funny and sometimes triumphant. How does Frank McCourt, as a writer, achieve this? "When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I managed to survive. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: a happy childhood is hardly worth it. Worse than "The ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood , and worse still is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood," writes Frank McCourt of his early life. Although Frank McCourt's autobiography, Angela's Ashes, paints a picture of both terrible poverty and struggle, this text is engaging and uplifting because of its focus on both humor and hope. McCourt's text shows the determination it takes for people living in terrible conditions to overcome their circumstances and improve their lives as well as theirs. of their family, although often painful and sad, is not depressing. Frank, as a young narrator, describes the events of his life without bitterness, anger or blame. Difficulties are treated simply as if they were a fact of life and, despite the difficult circumstances, many episodes in the novel are hilarious. Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930, just after the start of the Great Depression. During this time, millions of people around the world were unemployed and struggling to survive. Frank's father, Malachy McCourt, struggled to find work and easily lost it due to his alcoholism. His mother, Angela McCourt, being a good Catholic wife, gave birth to five babies in four years, leaving her unable to provide the most basic care for her children. When the baby, Margaret, died due to the shocking living conditions in Brooklyn, Angela sank into clinical depression, which went untreated. Other women in the building where the McCourts lived looked after the children until Angela's cousins ​​organized the family's return to Ireland. The image of Brooklyn presented by McCourt is almost cruelly miserable. In the first chapters of the text there are moments of gentle humor and irony. For example, Frank's full-immersion baptism, when his mother placed him in the font, seemed to be a Protestant symbol for the family. McCourt's humor has two main sources: childish innocence, including schoolboy humor, and the comical situations to which poverty can reduce people..