Conocimiento: Writing Irish Borderlands
Summary
(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.
Excerpt
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

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.
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.
Dedication
For Drucilla Mims Wall
Contents
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
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