Full Description
The Famine Diaspora and Irish American Women's Writing considers the works of eleven North American female authors who wrote for or descended from the Irish Famine generation: Anna Dorsey, Christine Faber, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Mother Jones, Kate Kennedy, Margaret Dixon McDougall, Mary Meaney, Alice Nolan, Fanny Parnell, Mary Anne Sadlier, and Elizabeth Hely Walshe. This collection examines the ways the writings of these women contributed significantly to the construction of Irish North-American identities, and played a crucial role in the dissemination of Famine memories transgenerationally as well as transnationally. The included annotated excerpts from these women writers' works and the accompanying essays by prominent international scholars offer insights on the sociopolitical position of the Irish in North America, their connections with the homeland, women's activities in transnational (often Catholic) publishing networks and women writers' mediation of Ireland's cultural heritage. Furthermore, the volume illustrates the generic variety of Irish American women's writing of the Famine generation, which comprises political treatises, novels, short stories and poetry, and bears witness to these female authors' profound engagement with political and social issues, such as the conditions of the poor and woman's vote.
Contents
Section I: Irish American Women's Activism (1880-1920).- 1. Fanny Parnell: The Songstress of the Land League.- 2. Mother Jones, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Famine Memory.- 3. Kate Kennedy, Irish Famine Refugee, American Feminist.- Section II: Famine Memory and Irish American Women's Writing.- 4. From Regional Remembrance to Transatlantic Heritage: the Transportability of Famine memory in Fiction by Mary Anne Sadlier, Anna Dorsey and Alice Nolan.- 5. Margaret Dixon McDougall's The Days of a Life (1883); an Irish-Canadian Perspective of the Repetitive Nature of Irish History.- Section III: The Global Famine Diaspora: Mary Anne Sadlier and Her Contemporary Female Authors.- 6. Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant Women Writers' Perceptions of the Famine Migration and Resettlement in British North America.- 7. Sentimentally Irish, Racially White: The Balancing Act of Irish-American Identity in the Novels of Sadlier and Meany.
