Literatures of the Irish Diaspora

Novels You Need to Purchase

All Other Texts Are Supplied by Your Instructor

Peter Carey | True History of the Kelly Gang | 2000 | amazon | Irish in Australia

J.G. (James Gordon) Farrell | The Siege of Krishnapur | 1973 | amazon | Irish in India

Margaret Mulvihill | Natural Selection | 1986 | amazon | Irish in Britain

Kate O’Brien | Mary Lavelle | 1936 | amazon | Irish in Spain

Colm Tóibín | Brooklyn | 2009 | amazon | Irish in the United States of America

Basic Course Data

Course Name • Codes ——— Literatures of the Irish Diaspora • CRN 15922: ENGL 5090, Section A (Undergraduate) • CRN 15924: ENGL 5090G, Section A (Graduate)

Location • Days, Times ——— Room 2041, Interdisciplinary Academic Building (IAB) • Mo We Fr • 9:05 am - 9:55 am

Absence Penalty ——— Beginning with first session of second week, minus 0.75% applied to each absence (and minus 0.25% to each tardy)

Excused Absence due to Covid-19 ——— Instructor will excuse Covid 19-related absence only if student has registered with CARES Center, which will load confirmation of excusable quarantine period into instructor’s official Class Roster • Student should also seek printed and/or email confirmation from CARES Center for emailing (by student) to instructor

Only Other Excused Absences ——— (#1) student is representing university in official capacity (academics, sports, etc.) as confirmed by hard-copy letter from event supervisor; (#2) student is active-duty military performing supervisor-verified service; (#3) student is attending to bereavement of her/his spouse, parent, grandparent, child

Instructor’s Office Hours (IAB 2008 or Virtual) • Email ——— Mo We • 10:00 am - 12:00 pm (noon) • Also by appointment • hkeeley@georgiasouthern.edu

Grade ——— 20% each for: (#1) Exam A (Fr Feb 12); (#2) Exam B (Fr Mar 12); (#3) Exam C (7:30 am, Fr May 5); (#4) Researched Term Paper; (#5) Homework and In-Class Exercises

Get an “F” for Entire Course ——— Plagiarizing words and/or ideas • Any other form of cheating

University Illness Policy (Covid-19)

We want you to take appropriate precautions for your health as well as the well-being of your classmates. If you become ill during the term, please contact me immediately. We will work through what you will need to do, to either continue working in class or make up work that might have been missed during your absence. If you have an illness that would result in an extended absence, you will need to contact the Dean of Students office. In the event of serious illness, injury, or extenuating circumstances, the DOS office will notify professors at your request.

If you need to self-report either a confirmed or suspected positive COVID-19 diagnosis, have received self-quarantine requirements, or have symptoms with pending test results, please complete the CARES Center COVID-19 self-reporting form (through the MyGeorgiaSouthern portal under "COVID-19 Information & Resources"). You may also reach the CARES Center by using the MyGS mobile app, calling 912-478-CARE (M-F 8am-5pm), or emailing covidsupport@georgiasouthern.edu. The CARES Center should not be used for medical advice. If you need medical advice, you need to call your health provider or 911.

Eavan Boland

Selected Poems

HELPFUL DATA WHEN APPROACHING THE ASSIGNED TEXT

In class, we discuss three poems: “The Emigrant Irish” (1987); “Exile! Exile!” (2001); and “Emigrant Letters” (2001). The package contains additional poems about exile, but by no means the totality of Boland’s work on that subject. FYI: When six years old, Boland relocated to London, where her father was assigned as Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom — a highly prestigious appointment. At school and elsewhere in London, she experienced anti-Irish prejudice. Here’s a portion of her autobiographical poem, “An Irish Childhood in England, 1951”: “I came to in nineteen fifty-one: | barely-gelled, a freckled six-year-old, | overdressed and sick on the plane || … the teacher in the London convent [school] … | when I produced ‘I amn’t’ in the classroom | turned and said — ‘You're not in Ireland now.’” From 1996 until her death in 2020, Boland lived part of the year (spring and fall semesters) in the Bay Area, teaching Creative Writing and English as a tenured professor at Stanford University. Otherwise, she lived in her suburban home in Dublin.

Here are some points to ponder with respect to “The Emigrant Irish,” a sonnet: (1) “out the back” (line 1) is a common idiomatic expression in Ireland, meaning “behind the house”; (2) “better than” and “newer than” (line 3) are incomplete phrases; (3) one wonders why “we need” (line 5) the emigrant Irish — or at least the memory of them — at “this time” or “now” (line 4); (4) prior generations that emigrated would have seen as luxuries what the present-day Irish consider to be “necessities” (line 6); (5) many of Boland’s poems interrogate “possessions” (line 10) and other objects (especially domestic objects) with which humans interact; (6) the poem’s speaker recognizes “old songs” (line 14) as essential components of the emigrant’s patrimony; (6) “The Emigrant Irish,” “Exile! Exile!” and many other Boland poems proceed by quatrains (i.e. four-line stanzas); this form may gesture to the quatrain as a common feature in much traditional Gaeilge (Irish-language) poetry.

Here are some points to ponder with respect to “Exile! Exile!”: (1) arguably, the poem is set in Boland’s US home, in the Bay Area of California, and presents an eastward” (line 16) movement in thought and imagery, towards Ireland; (2) perhaps the speaker imagines pieces of furniture “unload[ing]” some of their “atoms” (line 6), which then reconfigure to “become” (line 8) Irish scenes and artifacts; (3) “the Comeraghs” (line 9) refers to a mountain range in the maritime county of Waterford, Ireland; thus, the third stanza begins in an upland environment and ends in a lower or “fallen” (line 12) one; (4) the sixth and final stanza returns to the room invoked in the opening stanza, ultimately focusing on a fine detail: the “crazed” (line 24) pattern on the surface of a porcelain fruit bowl; (5) the (possessive) pronoun in “never seen its own earth” (line 22) may refer to the “fruit” or the “bowl” (line 21).

Here are some points to ponder with respect to “Emigrant Letters”: (1) the poem connects “voice” (line 4) and “accent” (line 13) to place, arguing that the geography and weather of one’s place of residence affect how one speaks; (2) the poem’s speaker notes that a person’s original “way of speaking” (line 8) gradually alters once that individual settles outside her/his native land as an immigrant; (3) having contemplated the spoken word in the first four of the poem’s eight stanzas, the speaker turns to the written word — specifically, “emigrant letters” (line 16) — in the last four; (4) emigrant letters convey to the site of nativity or origin a sense of the new place, with the emigrant’s very name becoming “half signature [the person], half salt [the place]” (page 20).

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (I)

Delivered to a joint session of the lower and upper houses of the Oireachtas (Ireland’s national parliament) in Dublin

Extracts ——— “I have become more convinced each year that [Ireland’s] great narrative of dispossession and belonging, which so often had its origins in sorrow and leave-taking, has become — with a certain amount of historic irony — one of the treasures of our society. If that is so then our relation with the diaspora beyond our shores is one which can instruct our society in the values of diversity, tolerance, and fair-mindedness.” ——— “We cannot have it both ways. We cannot want a complex present and still yearn for a simple past. … We cannot undo the silence of our own past, but we can lend our voice to those who now suffer.” ——— “I chose the title of this speech — ‘Cherishing the Irish Diaspora’ — with care. Diaspora, in its meaning of dispersal or scattering, includes the many ways, not always chosen, that people have left this island [Ireland]. To cherish is to value and to nurture and support. If we are honest we will acknowledge that those who leave do not always feel cherished. As Eavan Boland reminds us in her poem ‘The Emigrant Irish’: ‘Like oil lamps we put them out the back, | Of our houses, of our minds.’” ——— “No family on this island can be untouched by the fact that so many of our young people leave it. The reality is that we have lost, and continue every day to lose, their presence and their brightness. These young people leave Ireland to make new lives in demanding urban environments. As well as having to search for jobs, they may well find themselves lonely, homesick, unable to speak the language of those around them, and, if things do not work out, unwilling to accept the loss of face of returning home.” ——— “The men and women of our diaspora represent not simply a series of departures and losses. They remain, even while absent, a precious reflection of our own growth and change, a precious reminder of the many strands of identity which compose our story.”

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (II)

Concise data about the Emigrant Lamp at Áras an Uachtaráin (Irish presidential mansion)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (III)

Mary J. Hickman. “Migration and Diaspora.” Chapter 7 of The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture. Editors: Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pages 117-136.

Maeve Brennan

“The Servants’ Dance” (1954)

short story

Peter Carey

True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)

novel

Emma Donoghue

“Going Back” (1993)

short story

Emma Donoghue. “Going Back.” Published in Ireland in Exile: Irish Writers Abroad. Edited by Dermot Bolger. New Island Books, 1993. Pages 157-170.

J.G. (James Gordon) Farrell

The Siege of Krishnapur (1973)

novel

Gish Jen

“Who’s Irish?” (1998)

short story

HELPFUL DATA WHEN APPROACHING THE ASSIGNED TEXT

Jen’s short story may be read vis-à-vis historic tensions between Chinese and Irish immigrants in the United States, especially in connection with the building of the transcontinental railroad. That major endeavor was sanctioned by the Pacific Railroad Act, which President Abraham Lincoln signed into law on July 1, 1862. The Union Pacific Railroad company (UPR) was contacted to lay track from east to west, beginning near Omaha, Nebraska; the Central Pacific Railroad company (CPR) was contracted to lay track from west to east, beginning in Sacramento, California. Initially, CPR employed mainly Irish laborers; however, frustration over modest wages for tough work caused many to quit. Chinese laborers filled the resulting void, becoming approximately 90% of the workforce by May 10, 1869, when the Golden Spike was driven in to mark the project’s completion . A folk memory of this matter likely informs Jen’s narrator’s comment, “I always thought Irish people are like Chinese people, work so hard on the railroad, but now I know why the Chinese beat the Irish” (page 3). Between them, the two railroad companies (CPR, UPR) employed around 15,000 Chinese and 10,000 Irish laborers.

“Who’s Irish?” offers a means to contemplate the integration part of the migration-integration phenomenon. We encounter three generations: the immigrant matriarch (the narrator; perhaps also Bess Shea); the narrator’s Chinese-born child (Natalie); Natalie’s American-born child (Sophie). With the obvious exception of Bess, the Shea coterie is decidedly male: “four brothers in the family, and not one of them work” (page 4); “husband [John] go to the gym to be a man” (page 5). Bess notes that, as youths, the Shea brothers lacked a male role-model: “[R]aising four boys with no father is no picnic” (page 7). All the story’s Chinese and Chinese-American characters are female.

Names are significant. Natalie means “birth [of the Lord].” While the narrator’s hard work in the restaurant facilitated Natalie’s entry into the American middle class (“vice president in the bank” [page 3]), it may be that Natalie has not fully matured as an American. Natalie’s name signals the infant state. Sophie means “wisdom,” and Amy means “beloved,” although it also suggests the French noun ami or amie (“friend”).

The text features much violence, both explicit and implicit: “[T]he gang members come for protection money” (page 3); “[H]e [Sinbad] like to kick his mommy” (page 11); “I [narrator] … use a stick … and … I hit her [Sophie, in the foxhole]” (page 12); “we have to escape from China” (page 14).

W. Somerset Maugham

“P & O” (1926)

short story

George Moore

“Home Sickness” (1903)

short story

Margaret Mulvihill

Natural Selection (1986)

novel

Kate O’Brien

Mary Lavelle (1936)

novel

Colm Tóibín

Brooklyn (2009)

novel

Maurice Walsh

“The Quiet Man” (1935)

Green Rushes Version

short story

Maurice Walsh. “The Quiet Man.” Version Published as Part 3 of Walsh’s 5-Part Short Story Collection Green Rushes (1935). Original Version Published in Saturday Evening Post, Edition of February 11, 1933.

Luke Gibbons. Selections from Ireland into Film: The Quiet Man. Cork University Press, 2002. “Introduction” (Pages 1-20). Chapter 1: “Maurice Walsh: The Writer” (Pages 21-39).

Selected

Emigrant Ballads

B Noel Brazil • “Ellis Island” (1985) • Performed by Mary Black

C Attributed to Patrick Carpenter • “Skibbereen” (c. 1880) • Performed by Sinéad O’Connor

C Arthur Colahan • “Galway Bay” (1947) • Written in Leicester, England • Performed by Bing Crosby

C Michael Considine • “Spancil Hill” (early 1870s) • Performed by Robbie McMahon

F Frank Fahy • “My Own Dear Galway Bay” (probably 1880s) • Written in London, England • Performed by Delores Keane

F Jeremy (“Jem”) Finer and Shane MacGowan • “Fairytale of New York” (1987) • Performed by The Pogues, featuring Kristy MacColl

F Percy French • “The Mountains of Mourne” (1896) • Performed by Brendan O’Dowda

H Edward (“Ed”) Harrigan • “McNally’s Row of Flats” (1882) • Performed by Mick Moloney

M Ewan MacColl • “England’s Motorway” (1959) • Also known as “Come, My Little Son” • Performed by Luke Kelly

M Jimmy McCarthy • “As I Leave Behind Neidín” (1985) • Neidín is the Gaeilge (Irish-language) name for the town of Kenmare, County Kerry • Performed by Mary Black and Jimmy McCarthy

M Jimmy McCarthy • “Missing You” (1980s) • Performed by Christy Moore

M (Stephen Patrick) Morrissey • “Irish Blood, English Heart” (2002) • Performed by Morrissey

S Pete St. John • “The Fields of Athenry” (1979) • Performed by Paddy Reilly