What can the life writing of post-famine Irish immigrants tell us about Irish diasporic memory?
Of Memory and the Misplaced draws from the writing of previously unknown immigrants to contest conventional narratives about the Irish in North America. Analyzing over 30 memoirs written between 1900 and 1970, Sarah O'Brien demonstrates how ordinary immigrants subverted the typical grand narratives of Irish nationalism to tell their own story, on their own terms. Using cultural history and linguistics, O'Brien highlights US influence on Irish immigrants, who were able to explore taboo themes such as domestic violence, same-sex love, and famine-induced trauma. Importantly, Of Memory and the Misplaced also critiques the romanticized idea of the Irish landscape as a site of cultural memory and shows how the interiority of the domestic world provided women with the language needed to reclaim their own lives.
By combining literary and historical theory with memory studies, Of Memory and the Misplaced highlights voices that have traditionally been silenced and offers a rare and unexplored collection of primary source autobiographical texts to better understand the experiences of Irish immigrants in the United States.
What can the life writing of post-famine Irish immigrants tell us about Irish diasporic memory?
Of Memory and the Misplaced draws from the writing of previously unknown immigrants to contest conventional narratives about the Irish in North America. Analyzing over 30 memoirs written between 1900 and 1970, Sarah O'Brien demonstrates how ordinary immigrants subverted the typical grand narratives of Irish nationalism to tell their own story, on their own terms. Using cultural history and linguistics, O'Brien highlights US influence on Irish immigrants, who were able to explore taboo themes such as domestic violence, same-sex love, and famine-induced trauma. Importantly, Of Memory and the Misplaced also critiques the romanticized idea of the Irish landscape as a site of cultural memory and shows how the interiority of the domestic world provided women with the language needed to reclaim their own lives.
By combining literary and historical theory with memory studies, Of Memory and the Misplaced highlights voices that have traditionally been silenced and offers a rare and unexplored collection of primary source autobiographical texts to better understand the experiences of Irish immigrants in the United States.
Sarah O'Brien is Lecturer at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland, and codirector of the college's Oral History Centre. She is author of Linguistic Diasporas, Narrative and Performance: The Irish in Argentina.
"Solidly rooted in recent theoretical frameworks from memory
studies, Of Memory and the Displaced provides a valuable
combination of academic analyses and lengthy extracts from hitherto
unexplored Irish-American migrants' memoirs. This pioneering
publication challenges the predominant notion of a Catholic
transatlantic diaspora in significant ways, by integrating the
memories of women as well as non-Catholic immigrants, and by
stressing the regional and linguistic variations among them. The
included memoirs show how watershed events in both Ireland and the
United States—such as the Great Famine and the American Civil
War—were remembered by intercultural communities well into the
twentieth century."—Marguérite Corporaal, Radboud University
"O'Brien has produced an exceptionally rich and beautifully written
study of Irish diasporic life narratives informed by the arguments
of contemporary memory studies and autobiographical theory.
Micro-analyses of four texts ranging from the Famine era to the
late 20th century are balanced by a sophisticated and wide-ranging
synthesis of eighteen other works which establishes patterns of
experience and narrative recollection among Irish immigrants to the
United States. Historically precise and theoretically erudite, this
book will be an essential text for scholars of autobiography,
immigration, memory studies, and Irish literature and
culture."—Elizabeth Grubgeld, author of Disability and Life Writing
in Post Independence Ireland
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