"Moynihan is not the first to note the shadow that America’s racial experience casts over Ireland, but she deploys it in original and fascinating ways."—Irish University Review
"One of the most impressive aspects of Moynihan’s overall approach is her repeated warning against recasting Irish experience in terms of American debates of race and immigration. . . . Her own close readings of Irish texts are similarly enhanced by an attentiveness to the small print of race and immigration in contemporary Ireland."—The Irish Times
"The book is enriched by a wide-ranging sense of the expressive genres in which such difficult questions are aired—not just fiction (the work of Joseph O’Connor and Roddy Doyle) and drama (selected works of Ronan Noone and Daniel O’Kelly), but also films by Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan, and Eugene Brady whose provenance is as much American by way of Hollywood as it is Irish per se."—New Hibernia Review
Description
With the economic rise of the “Celtic Tiger” in the 1990s, Irish culture was deeply impacted by a concurrent rise in immigration. A nation tending to see itself as a land of emigrants suddenly saw waves of newcomers. In this book, Moynihan takes as her central question a formulation by sociologist Steve Garner: “What happens when other people’s diasporas converge on the homeland of diasporic people?” Approaching the question from a cultural rather than a sociological vantage point, Moynihan delves into fiction, drama, comedy, and cinema since 1998 to examine the various representations of and insights into race relations.
“Other People’s Diasporas” draws upon the recent fiction of Joseph O’Connor, Roddy Doyle, and Emma Donoghue; films directed by Jim Sheridan and Eugene Brady; drama by Donal O’Kelly and Ronan Noone; and the comedy of Des Bishop to present a highly original and engaging exploration of contemporary Irish discourses on race.
About the Author
Sinéad Moynihan is Lecturer and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham. Along with articles and book chapters, she is the author of Passing into the Present: Contemporary American Fiction of Racial and Gender Passing.
April 2013