Conocimiento: Writing Irish Borderlands

Conocimiento: Writing Irish Borderlands

Eamonn Wall

Oxford - Berlin - Bruxelles - Chennai - Lausanne - New York

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wall, Eamonn, 1955- author.

Title: Conocimiento: writing Irish borderlands / Eamonn Wall.

Description: Oxford; New York: Peter Lang, 2025. | Series: Reimagining Ireland, 1662–9094; 142 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024059978 (print) | LCCN 2024059979 (ebook) | ISBN 9781803748702 (paperback) | ISBN 9781803748719 (ebook) | ISBN 9781803748726 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: English literature--Irish authors--History and criticism. | Borderlands in literature. | Belonging (Social psychology) in literature. | Anzaldúa, Gloria--Influence. | English literature--21st century--History and criticism. | Irish American literature--21st century--History and criticism.

Classification: LCC PR8722.B67 W35 2025 (print) | LCC PR8722.B67 (ebook) | DDC 820.9/9415--dc23/eng/202412-16

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024059978

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024059979

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Cover image Scape, Mixed Media on Canvasboard, 125 × 175mm

© Padhraig Nolan 2009

Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG

ISSN 1662-9094

ISBN 978-1-80374-870-2 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-1-80374-871-9 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-1-80374-872-6 (E-PUB)

DOI 10.3726/b22507

© 2025 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne, Switzerland

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, Oxford, United Kingdom

Eamonn Wall has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

info@peterlang.com

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

www.peterlang.com

Dedication

For Drucilla Mims Wall

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

CHAPTER 2
Australia Nepantla: E. M. Reapy’s Red Dirt Rage

CHAPTER 3
The New Tribe: Philip Casey’s The Fabulists

CHAPTER 4
Terence Winch: Words and Music of the Bronx Borderlands

CHAPTER 5
Is Fíor Sin/This Is My Truth: Úna-Minh Kavanagh’s Anseo, New Irish Border Narratives

CHAPTER 6
Crossing Borders with Louis Owens: Mixedblood Messages

CHAPTER 7
Amongst Women: Borderlands and Dwellings in John McGahern

CHAPTER 8
Leaving the Borderlands: Traversing Milkman’s Ten-Minute Area

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due and debts are owed to the individuals and institutions who have made the writing of this book possible. For warm places to work and read and for source materials: the Thomas Jefferson Library at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, the John Hardiman Library at the University of Galway; Enniscorthy Library; Leeds City Library. Thanks to my superiors and colleagues at the University of Missouri–St. Louis for support: Liane Constantine, Executive Director of UMSL Global; Professors Frank Grady and Suellynn Duffey, former and current chairs of the Department of English at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. I owe a particular debt to my fellow international professors and to the staff at UMSL Global for their many kindnesses and support.

I am grateful to Professor Timothy J. White of Xavier University in Cincinnati for guiding me through the issue of borders and borderlands and how they are seen from his discipline of political science; to Patrick Chapman for helping me understand Philip Casey’s work in digital media; to Dr Eamon Maher of Technological University Dublin for reading part of this project and for offering constructive feedback and generous encouragement; to Professor Donna Potts of Washington State University for her review of the manuscript and for her most detailed and helpful suggestions for revision; to the anonymous reader of the manuscript for insightful suggestions for revision and support; to Professor Gillian Dooley of Flinders University in Adelaide, editor of Writers in Conversation, who commissioned my interview with E. M. Reapy – the assignment that got this project started. Great thanks to Dr David Gardiner of the University of St Thomas for his support for my writing through the years. This manuscript was copy-edited with great skill and patience by Shannon Pennefeather. Thank you, Shannon, for your wonderful work. Thanks to Padhraig Nolan for the stunning cover image.

Earlier work on Philip Casey was published in Berfrois and in Distant Summers: Remembering Philip Casey: Writer, Fabulist, Friend (2024), a collection I coedited with Katie Donovan and Michael Considine. Thanks to Alan Hayes of Arlen House for making this publication possible, and to Russell Bennetts for inviting me to contribute to Berfrois. An earlier version of chapter five titled ‘Setting Out from Home with Louis Owens: Mixedblood Messages’ was published in Famine Pots: The Choctaw-Irish Gift Exchange, 1847–Present (2020), edited by LeAnne Howe and Padraig Kirwan and published by Michigan State University Press/Cork University Press. Early research on this material was presented at Midwest and West American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS) conferences in Denver, Portland, and De Kalb, Illinois, and at the Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand (ISAANZ) conferences in Adelaide and Melbourne. I am grateful to the convenors of these conferences for their welcome and hospitality.

Thanks to my wife, partner and fellow author Drucilla Mims Wall for her patience and support. It was in accompanying her to a WLA conference that I was first introduced to the work of Gloria Anzaldúa. I hope I have been as useful to her as she has been to me, though this is unlikely, as she will surely agree. Many thanks to Susan Naramore Maher and Al Kammerer for their friendship through the decades and for great times shared in the American West. Thanks to Matthew and Caitlin Wall and their families for their support. To my family in Enniscorthy and County Sligo for always welcoming me home so warmly. I am fortunate to have such supportive families in both the United States and Ireland. Though interrupted by COVID-19, my annual study abroad duties in Galway for the University of Missouri–St. Louis allowed me to spend extended periods over more than two decades there, and I am grateful for the welcome I have received over the years from the city’s literary community and from the staff at the University of Galway. With great fondness, I recall delightful times spent with Kevin Higgins, a wonderful writer of poems and essays, and a most welcoming friend and host. I miss him greatly, particularly whenever I return to Galway.