Irish Migrants in New Communities: Seeking the Fair Land

(Hardback)

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Irish migrants in new communities: Seeking the Fair Land comprises the second collection of essays by these editors exploring fresh aspects and perspectives on the subject of the Irish diaspora. This volume, edited by Mirtn Cathin and Mchel hAodha, develops many of the oral history themes of the first book and concentrates more on issues surrounding the adaptation of migrants to new or host environments and cultures. These new places often have a jarring effect, as well as a welcoming air, and the Irish bring their own interpretations, hostilities, and suspicions, all of which are explored in a fascinating and original number of new perspectives.

Reviews

Mirtn Cathin and Mchel hAodha's Irish Migrants in New Communities: Seeking the Fair Land is an eclectic collection of fascinating essays on a varied and sometimes motley crew of Irish emigrants, castaways, missionaries, and external and internal 'exiles,' ranging from Terence Connell, 'King of the Horrifories' in New Guinea, to Irish-American labor leader Michael Mooney, nearly lynched by Colorado's right-wing vigilantes, to Bobby Sands in his lesser-known role as Long Kesh guitarist and song-writer. This is a book of stories about people sometimes forgotten by their own descendants, and often betrayed and traduced by History's 'winners,' but now recovered to edify a new generation of Irishmen and -women who are forced once more, by their economic and political overlords, to 'seek the fair land' outside Ireland. -- Kerby Miller, University of Missouri
Irish Migrants in New Communities: Seeking the Fair Land contains an eclectic assortment of tales of the Irish experience of emigration. It gives a voice to a host of almost forgotten migrants (nuns, miners, seafaring vagabonds, and soldiers), tracing their complex relationship with the lands of their birth and adoption. This collection is an unexpected pot of gold, its ten chapters expertly interrogating the theme of exile, what it meant to be Irish, and what was lost in the leaving of Ireland. -- Rory Sweetman, University of Otago
Like the pioneering spirit evinced by its subjects, this collection of essays explores and uncovers striking new evidence about the formidable reach of the Irish diaspora. In doing so, it reaffirms for Irish migration studies the centrality of personal narrative in its many guises, whether it is oral testimony, letters, folklore, ballads, or diaries, as an indispensable source for comprehending and evaluating migrant consciousness. -- Tony Murray, London Metropolitan University

Author Bio

Mirtn Cathin is lecturer in history at the School of Education and Social Science, University of Central Lancashire. Mchel hAodha is visiting lecturer in the Department of History, University of Limerick.