"An admirable and welcome book."—The Washington Post
"Lightly mixing personal and family experience with an idiosyncratic social history of Irish immigration, Mathieu's first book draws on her travels to Ireland and her interviews with the Irish in rural Roscrea and environs and in New York City to survey the landscape of emigration in Ireland and in the U.S."—Kirkus Reviews
"Mathieu's title blends autobiographical introspection with cultural analysis. . . . A personal, intriguing journey."—The Midwest Book Review
"Joan Mathieu has tracked the Irish 'Zulus'-emigrants and immigrants-through monasteries, pubs, taxicabs, and living rooms, from Roscrea, Ireland, to the Bronx, New York. In the end, what she has produced is not so much a map of the Irish diaspora as a geography of the Irish spirit. It is a surprising, moving, and truly outstanding book."—Lolis Eric Elie, author of Smokestack Lightning
"A well-drawn portrait of a people in flux. Recommended."—Library Journal
About the Author
Joan Mathieu is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Antioch Review. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, just blocks away from the neighborhood in which her Irish grandmother first settled.
November 1999