WHY GO HOME PADDY?
I’ve been asked that question several times; along with: Where does the story come from? How did you come up with this? And why do they look like apes?
Well…I can remember the EXACT moment when I thought about doing a story about the hatred and intolerance that the Irish faced when they came to America. It was in January 2003 on Superbowl Sunday and I was in a Irish bar back home in the Bridgeport, Connecticut area. The bartender was an old school Mick, and while chatting with a friend and I, he lamented the then current state of the city of Bridgeport. My friend and I listened attentively while our bartender told us tales of our hometown’s glory days. And then…our old, crusty, Irish-American bartender decided to not only blame Bridgeport’s problems on a certain minority group, but he also used a particularly offensive racial slur to describe this minority group. And I thought, “Why the Hell does he think it’s okay to say this to us?!?”
Later that day, I thought about Irish-Americans either forgetting the troubles of their own people, or flat out NOT knowing their own history at all! And so GO HOME PADDY was born out of a desire to school my own people — about their suffering, their struggles, and their own intolerance.
As for why my Irish characters have an simian-like look to them, I can direct you to a topic that was blogged about just today on the blog of Ta-Nehisi Coates (a senior editor at The Atlantic). You can read the blog posts HERE and HERE as well.
I’ve much more to say, but this is probably all you need to know for now.
And a big “HELLO” to new readers!
