Is there still a distinct Irish identity in America? This highly
original survey says yes, though it's often an indirect one. True, the
age of heroic immigration is over, and today the term "Irish-American"
almost always means an American of Irish descent. If the Irish long ago
ceased to be America's largest ethnic group, they've nonetheless stayed
among the most visible (not least because St Patrick's Day has been
adopted by the nation at large). But for all the external trappings of
Irishness, the terms, traditions, and nuances of that identity stay
elusive.
Irish-American Autobiography opens a new window on the shifting
meanings of Irishness over the twentieth century, by looking at a range
of works that have never before been considered as a distinct body of
literature. Opening with celebrity memoirs from athletes like boxer John
L. Sullivan and ballplayer Connie Mack--written when the Irish were
eager to put their raffish origins behind them--later chapters trace the
many tensions, often unspoken, registered by Irish Americans who've told
their life stories. New York saloonkeepers and South Boston step dancers
set themselves against the larger culture, setting a pattern of being on
the outside looking in. Even the classic 1950s TV comedy The
Honeymooners speaks to the urban Irish origins, and the poignant sense
of exclusion felt by its creator Jackie Gleason. Catholicism, so key to
the identity of earlier generations of Irish Americans, has also
evolved. One chapter looks at the painful diffidence of priest
autobiographers, and others reveal how traditional Irish Catholic ideas
of the guardian angel and pilgrimage have evolved and stayed potent down
to our own time. Irish-American Autobiography becomes, in the end, a
story of a continued search for connection--documenting an "ethnic fade"
that never quite happened.
