The Irish Voice In America

Recovering an Irish Voice from the American Frontier is a bilingual compilation of stories by Eoin Ua Cathail, an Irish emigrant, based loosely on his experiences in the West and Midwest. The author draws on the popular American Dime Novel genre throughout to offer unique reflections on nineteenth-century American life. As a member of a government mule train accompanying the U.S. military during the Plains Indian Wars, Ua Cathail depicts fierce encounters with Native American tribes, while also subtly commenting on the hypocrisy of many famine-era Irish immigrants who failed to recognize the parallels between their own plight and that of dispossessed Native peoples. These views are further challenged by his stories set in the upper Midwest. His writings are marked by the eccentricities and bloated claims characteristic of much American Western literature of the time, while also offering valuable transnational insights into Irish myth, history, and the Gaelic Revival movement. This bilingual volume, with facing Irish-English pages, marks the first publication of Ua Cathail’s work in both the original Irish and in translation. It also includes a foreword from historian Richard White, a comprehensive introduction by Mahoney, and a host of previously unpublished historical images. “Ua Cathail’s Irish-language tales anticipate Twain and Hemingway in a multicultural world of settlers, shysters, and simple idealists still confronted by the challenge of Native Americans.”—Declan Kiberd, author of Inventing Ireland: The Literature of a Modern Nation

In this study, Charles Fanning has written the first general account of the origins and development of a literary tradition among American writers of Irish birth or background who have explored the Irish immigrant or ethnic experience in works of fiction. The result is a portrait of the evolving fictional self-consciousness of an immigrant group over a span of 250 years. Fanning traces the roots of Irish-American writing back to the eighteenth century and carries it forward through the traumatic years of the Famine to the present time with an intensely productive period in the twentieth century beginning with James T. Farrell. Later writers treated in depth include Edwin O'Connor, Elizabeth Cullinan, Maureen Howard, and William Kennedy. Along the way he places in the historical record many all but forgotten writers, including the prolific Mary Ann Sadlier. The Irish Voice in America is not only a highly readable contribution to American literary history but also a valuable reference to many writers and their works. For this second edition, Fanning has added a chapter that covers the fiction of the past decade. He argues that contemporary writers continue to draw on Ireland as a source and are important chroniclers of the modern American experience.

How a typical Irish emigrant rose to a position of influence at the highest levels of US and Irish politics. A remarkable firsthand account of an Irish emigrant who began as a part-time footballer and house-painter and became a journalist, author, founder and publisher of two newspapers, a magazine and website, as well as a leading advocate for immigration reform for the 'illegal' Irish in the United States. He played a pivotal role in the Northern Ireland peace process, securing a US visa for Gerry Adams in 1994 and acting as intermediary between the White House and Sinn Féin during a critical time in the peace negotiations. Niall O'Dowd has been described as: 'the authentic voice of the Irish in America, who has more knowledge of this community than almost anyone else alive,' by Jim Dwyer, New York Times and Pulitzer Prize winner.

'An excellent book.' Irish Voice (New York)Ties between political activists in Black America and Ireland span several centuries, from the days of the slave trade to the close links between Frederick Douglass and Daniel O'Connell, and between Marcus Garvey and Eamon de Valera. This timely book traces those historic links and examines how the struggle for black civil rights in America in the 1960s helped shape the campaign against discrimination in Northern Ireland. The author includes interviews with key figures such as Angela Davis, Bernadette McAliskey and Eamonn McCann.

In New Perspectiveson the Irish Diaspora, Charles Fanning incorporates eighteen fresh perspectives on the Irish diaspora over three centuries and around the globe. He enlists scholarly tools from the disciplines of history, sociology, literary criticism, folklore, and culture studies to present a collection of writings about the Irish diaspora of great variety and depth.

For almost forty years, Fr Sean McManus has been at the heart of the Irish American campaign to pressurise the British government regarding injustice in Northern Ireland. This is a deeply personal account of how his lone voice mainstreamed Northern Ireland on Capitol Hill, after the Catholic Church removed him from Britain. He became 'Britain's nemesis in America', founding the Irish National Caucus in 1974. Also chronicles the events and social context that influenced him, growing up in a parish divided by the Border.