What can the life writing of post-famine Irish immigrants tell us about Irish diasporic memory?
Of Memory and the Misplaced considers the endurance and nature of Irish American memory across the twentieth century. Guided by 30 memoirs written between 1900 and 1970, Sarah O'Brien shows the prevalence of intimate and taboo themes in ordinary immigrants' writing, such as domestic violence, same-sex love, and famine-induced trauma. Importantly, Of Memory and the Misplaced critiques the role of the Irish landscape as a site of memory and shows how the interiority of the domestic world has provided Irish women with the language needed to reclaim their own lives.
Combining literary and historical theory, Of Memory and the Misplaced highlights voices that have traditionally been silenced and offers a rare and unexplored collection of primary source autobiographical texts to better understand the experiences of Irish immigrants in the United States.

About the Author

Sarah O'Brien is Lecturer at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland, and codirector of the college's Oral History Centre. She is author of Linguistic Diasporas, Narrative and Performance: The Irish in Argentina.

Reviews

"Solidly rooted in recent theoretical frameworks from memory studies, Of Memory and the Displaced provides a valuable combination of academic analyses and lengthy extracts from hitherto unexplored Irish-American migrants' memoirs. This pioneering publication challenges the predominant notion of a Catholic transatlantic diaspora in significant ways, by integrating the memories of women as well as non-Catholic immigrants, and by stressing the regional and linguistic variations among them. The included memoirs show how watershed events in both Ireland and the United States-such as the Great Famine and the American Civil War-were remembered by intercultural communities well into the twentieth century."-Marguerite Corporaal, Radboud University
"O'Brien has produced an exceptionally rich and beautifully written study of Irish diasporic life narratives informed by the arguments of contemporary memory studies and autobiographical theory. Micro-analyses of four texts ranging from the Famine era to the late 20th century are balanced by a sophisticated and wide-ranging synthesis of eighteen other works which establishes patterns of experience and narrative recollection among Irish immigrants to the United States. Historically precise and theoretically erudite, this book will be an essential text for scholars of autobiography, immigration, memory studies, and Irish literature and culture."-Elizabeth Grubgeld, author of Disability and Life Writing in Post Independence Ireland

Book Information
ISBN 9780253067876
Author Sarah O'Brien
Format Hardback
Page Count 344
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 676g