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Conocimiento: Writing Irish Borderlands

by Eamonn Wall (Author)
Monographs XII, 200 Pages
Series: Reimagining Ireland, Volume 142

Summary

« In an era when borders that previously defined Irish literature – whether spatial, social or of the body - demand renewed interrogation, Eamonn Wall’s book breathes energy and rigour into readings of Irish writers ranging from ‘homegrown’ to ‘immigrant and diasporic’, and reveals the emergence of increasingly hybrid creative practices ».
(Lorna Shaughnessy, Poet and Director of Crosswinds: Irish and Galician Poetry and Translation).
« Using Gloria Anzaldua’s work, Wall examines "borderlands" in Irish writing. These liminal spaces are not just territories, but culture, tradition, and time. Wall focuses on the borders that divide like class, gender, and sexuality but also language and the divide between the physical and spiritual worlds».
(Timothy J. White, Professor of Political Science, Xavier University).
In this study, Eamonn Wall brings the work of the American writer/scholar/activist Gloria Anzaldúa into dialogue with contemporary Irish and Irish American writing to reveal the many strategies that authors employ to describe, represent and navigate borders and borderlands. Borders, as Wall reveals, are not only geographical, but they are also psychological, ethical, gendered, abstract and obvious, and underlie much of life. Borderlands are liminal spaces in areas alongside borders that can be both liberating and frightening. Employing Anzaldúa’s language and methodology, Wall’s reveals how central borderlands are to the work of John McGahern, E.M. Reapy, Anna Burns, Úna Minh-Kavanagh, Terence Winch, Louis Owens, James Welsh, Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Philip Casey, and others.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Dedication
  • 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

Conocimiento: Writing Irish Borderlands

Eamonn Wall

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

Dedication

For Drucilla Mims Wall

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.

Details

Pages
XII, 200
ISBN (PDF)
9781803748719
ISBN (ePUB)
9781803748726
ISBN (Softcover)
9781803748702
DOI
10.3726/b22507
Language
English
Publication date
2025 (May)
Keywords
American Indian Writers Modern Irish Literature Irish American Writers Borders Borderlands Literary Theory Irish Writers
Published
Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2025. xii, 200 pp.
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Eamonn Wall (Author)

Eamonn Wall is a professor of Global Studies and English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of From Oven Lane to Sun Prairie: In Search of Irish America (2019) and Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions (2011) as well as many essays, reviews, and volumes of poetry.

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