The light at the end of the tunnel is a train

books:


	• Irish America: Coming Into Clover Maureen Dezell Anchor, 2002 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Irish in America

Most Irish Americans interviewed for this book apologized to the author because they felt like they really had nothing to offer about Irish American culture. The Irish may be the one ethnic group in the U.S. who don't appreciate or recognize their uniqueness and commonality. This book helps the Irish to see themselves as they are, both good and bad. An eye opener.

Oh, It's So True!

I'm a Jew from New York, married to someone from South Boston. One of my familys closest friends (now regrettably desceased) came to the US from Belfast at the age of 10. Maureen Dezell has great interviews and made me laugh because I can see all of what she is talking about. I also have friends in Toastmasters from Ireland, and look forward to visiting in 2004. Then I can see the other side of Maureen Dezell's book. The book can be read in a quiet evening. Think of a deep psychological tome, only very readable and funny.
Her description of Michael Flatley and Riverdance keeps popping up.
No, I wont tell you. Read the book!

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The light at the end of the tunnel is a train

Reading Dezell, despite the choppy prose style and the staggered pace of the unevenly detailed chapters and the topical arrangement of historical fact, sociological theory, and often less than revealing (given the Irish reticence beneath the bluster as she explains) interviews with I suppose her assorted cronies and whoever they suggested in turn, this is essential reading anyhow. Typically I lavishly denigrate before I grudgingly praise, itself an Irish American trait.

She's best on the following explorations: how the stereotype of the male drinker came about only post-Famine, as the clergy channeled the surplus men's unattainable longings for a farm and a bride into the safer domain of the local pub. Why and how single women emigrating a century ago constituted 60% of the Irish, and how even as of 1990, 30% more females than males counted themselves in the census as Irish. Along with an especially successful dismantling of a host of cartoonish images to find which best mirror the true strength of the matriarchical (or plain female-dominated, as not all became brides and mothers even in America) power within the family and the Church and the schools, Dezell takes great pains to account for the combination of bluster and reserve that is so much part of Irish Americans who otherwise think they're totally assimilated.

She also takes the time at the end, in a section that could have been profitably expanded, into contrasting Irish-born with Irish American personalities and attitudes. The extroversion of the latter, contrary to the stereotype of the former, reminded me of the hypomanic theory recently advanced--if 2% of a population emigrates no matter how hard the times (and I assume this figure was greater at times in Ireland's past), these go-getters may carry a genetic trait tending towards restlessness and enterprenuership and iconoclasm, therefore the US benefited (even more than Canada or Australia) in combining these eager immigrants' traits with a capitalist and free-market oriented economy that rewarded risk-takers.

Back to Dezell, her look into the psyche of Irish America is the most persuasive part of her rather too quickly-paced and impressionistic account. It scrambles so much into the pan that the small size of the pages cannot adequately contain all that needs to be studied. This book would have benefitted from greater length (rare that I can say that) and a slower rate of examining so much that needs elaboration. For instance, while she quotes Kerby Miller once, this pioneering historian's thesis (in Emigrants & Exiles, 1987) that the exilic strain accounted for in Irish America could be traced back to the passive construction of the Irish language might have been a fascinating test of Dezell's observations about Irish American caution.

A glaring absence throughout this book is an almost total neglect of the Irish language; while little sustained in the US by emigrants, nonetheless it had a higher and more persistent presence than has long been presumed; while Dezell asserts that the Irish had the immediate advantage off the boat of speaking English, this is arguable for many 19c arrivals, at least as to fluency, and the lack of which accounted for some of the more stereotypical Irishisms that found their way onto stage and screen on both sides of the ocean. Still, the appended notes can point you in the necessary directions for further examination of most of the larger issues she raises.

Particularly noteworthy: how the "new Irish" of the 80s/90s had jump-started cultural revivals in the moribund festival/Noraid dichotomous diversions that seemed to have limited Irish American continuity and activism; why only in the 90s did Notre Dame and Boston College--she's good on the rivalry--get the funds and the impetus to start Irish Studies programs, long after other ethnic and racial groups had done so; how the decline of priests and nuns is changing the Church for the better among the laity despite the defection of so many Catholics; and how philanthropic and charitable giving can be accounted for in essential traits of Irish humility and fatalism.

All in all, a readable account, if not the last word.

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"Now ,don't go getting above buttermilk."

I've not heard the above saying before,but knew immediately exactly what it meant.This book is an excellent review of what it means to be Irish and what Irish,and particularly Catholic Irish is all about.
There are over 50 million scattered around the world who claim Irish ancestory;and by no means are they all alike.
"Almost anything you can say about Irish Americans is both true and false."
Dezell's discussion about CWASP's, Catholic/Celtic White Anglo Saxon Protestants,is a bit different ,but right on the mark.
The book is loaded with one-liners or epigrams.Here are a few to get your curiosity:

"No point being Irish unless you think that the world is going to break your heart someday."

"As is often the case, conventional wisdom is wrong."

"Irish blood doesn't water down very well,the strain must be strong."

"God gives us no more than we can bear." Rose Kennedy

"There is no race of people for which pychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever ." Sigmund Freud

"If you're feeling something,for Gods's sake take something."

"If I'm Irish and I lose my arm,someone is going to tell me,'it's a good thing I didn't lose them both."

A great read for anyone interested in Irish culture ,be it in Ireland,America or even here in Canada.

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Know your culture

A book I have devoured and given many times as a gift. Just because you're Irish-American doesn't mean you understand your culture. This book gave me many lightbulb moments as I saw friends and family in light of our culture instead of merely quirky individuals. The distinctions between Irish and Irish-Americans and East Coast vs Midwestern Irish-Americans were also eye-openers. And it is useful to rise above the stereotypes of Irish-Americans as drinkers and brawlers to see their role in creating and maintaining an amazing array of Catholic institutions.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Old-time politics, piety, and St. Patrick?s Day parades loom large when the Irish come to the American mind. None truly represents the complex legacy or contributions of the nation?s oldest ethnic group, who rank among the most highly educated and affluent Americans today.

In Irish America, Maureen Dezell takes a new and invigorated look at Americans of Irish Catholic ancestry ? who they are, and how they got that way. A welcome antidote to so many standard-issue, sentimental representations of the Irish in the United States, Irish America focuses on popular culture as well as politics; the Irish in the Midwest and West as well as the East; the ?new Irish? immigrants; the complicated role of the Church today; and the unheralded heritage of Irish American women. Deftly weaving history, reporting, and the observations of more than 100 men and women of Irish descent on both sides of the Atlantic, Dezell presents an insightful and highly readable portrait of a people and a culture.

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