Writer, editor, and author Maureen Dezell is the author of the critically acclaimed Irish America: Coming Into Clover. Much thanks to her for taking the time to share her thoughts on Irish-America with us.
1. What do you think of the current state of Irish-America? Where are we and where are we going? And how about the Boston Irish in particular?
I finished writing this book 10 years ago (in November 2000), after spending close to three years utterly immersed in the subject(s). While I’m still interested in things Irish American, my involvement in any communities or activities is fairly circumscribed. So I don’t think I can actually characterize a state of Irish America outside Greater Boston (where I live) with any insight or authority.
I can say with fair confidence I think there have been signal changes in what Irish Americans know and understand about our backgrounds – and that expressions of Irish American history, culture, identity, and politics are much richer and more diverse than they were for most of the second half of last century.
And how about those Boston Irish?
I wrote this book in part because I was perplexed and distressed by the fact the professional Boston Irish – “the world’s most oppressed majority,” as William Shannon called them – were widely and mistakenly believed to be representative of the Irish heritage in this country.
In the 1990s, Irish Americans had long since taken over major banks, brokerage houses, and prominent boards throughout the city of Boston. But you’d never have suspected that when Boston Irish political leaders got together with their aggrieved fellow travelers in male-dominated, exclusive organizations and institutions like the Southie St. Patrick’s Day parade or the all-male, black-tied Clover Club. They still railed against their imagined Yankee oppressors as if it were 1926.
They may still do this. I haven’t been paying attention!
But there’s a variety and a depth to Irish American culture and expression that did not exist 10 to 15 years ago, and I think that it has eclipsed the Boston Irish anachronism at long last.
2. Do you think that the infatuation with all things Irish of the late 1990′s has had any lasting legacy?
Yes. There’s an Irish American literature, an Irish music scene; there’s your graphic novel – a unique telling of our story! There are Irish American cultural organizations in many major cities around the country. There are Irish studies departments, cultural exchanges, genealogical organizations, and so on.
As I said earlier, I’m not involved in a lot of Irish American activity. But I have taken part in a few Irish American activities that would not have existed even 15 years ago.
I was a founding member of Irish American Writers and Artists, a group formed to support “O’bama” in 2008, for example. That group has since become quite active in New York, giving away yearly literary awards, and doing a lot of fundraising last year for Haitian relief.
Several members of the organization –which includes well-known people like T.C. Boyle, John Patrick Shanley, and Brian Dennehy – contributed to a literary folio published in late summer called “Celtic Twighlight, 21st Century Irish American Writers and Artists on Eugene O’Neill.” We were asked to write about why O’Neill still matters.
I was asked recently to advise the director of EmersonArts (not an Irish organization) on an upcoming Irish theater festival coming to Boston early next year.
These are things that interest me personally, of course, but that I think exemplify the fact there’s more diversity and opportunity – more ways to be Irish American.
There’s still a tendency in pop culture to portray American Irish characters and communities as overwhelmingly urban, blue-collar, and socially conservative, even though the vast majority of have been suburban, college-educated, and politically moderate for two generations at this point. But there’s somewhat more of a range, even on TV and in the movies. If I wrote the book today, I would probably compare and contrast Dennis Leary in “Rescue Me,” George Clooney in “Michael Clayton,” and Jack Donaghy in “30 Rock,” for example.
3. What do you think has caused the change in Irish-Americans regarding discovering their pasts? Especially in the face of a decades long attitude of “The past is best left alone”?
I think it’s a confluence of a better-educated, more prosperous American Irish diaspora; baby boomer curiosity about ourselves and our heritage; the last Irish migration here in the 1980s, and Ireland’s economic and cultural ascendancy in the 1980s and 1990s. The world is also a whole lot smaller. If your parents or grandparents won’t tell you about Ireland, you can get on a plane and go see it yourself.
4. Do you think there is a proper balance among Irish-Americans when it comes to accepting their own economic and social prosperity versus the “Don’t forget the past/Who do you think you are?” mentality? Or does it boil down to two separate camps that have to accept one way of thinking or the other?
I’m not quite sure I understand this question, but I’ll try to answer based on what I think you may be asking.
I think an acute awareness of where we came from – and empathy for the less fortunate – is very much a part of our religious and secular heritage – and admirable. I think it’s one of those things that’s taken for granted and not discussed in Irish families, which is why prosperous Irish Americans three generations away from Ireland tend to do more volunteer and social service work than most others, for example.
There is an appealing lack of entitlement and pretentiousness in the culture. But too much of that can be self-demeaning and limiting.
5. One of my absolute favorite comments in IRISH AMERICA: COMING INTO CLOVER is when you call the Anglo-Boston of the Victorian era NIMBY (not in my back yard) liberals. Why do you think the native Bostonians were so hostile towards the Irish, but such ardent abolitionists?
The abolitionists were nativists, and nativists in this country were aligned with suffragists, the temperance movement, and all sorts of know-it-all progressives who loathed Catholics, immigrants, social Democrats, the downtrodden, and the drunk. A lot of Famine Irish immigrants fell into most if not all of those categories.
(I recently read and highly recommend Dan Okrent’s book, “Last Call,” on the history of prohibition, which was an astonishingly misguided effort staunchly supported by a similar coalition of so-called progressives — joined by the Klan, who were far more worried about Catholics and Jews than about poor Black people in those days.)
6. What’s your opinion of the current economic calamity in Ireland? Will these problems come to affect Irish-Americans in any way?
Like most Irish Americans, I have limited understanding of the economy and politics of Ireland. So I don’t like to offer opinions on that, except to say I wish them the best.
7. Have you ever read a graphic novel or web-comic before? And if so, which ones and what do you think of the medium?
I’ve read a couple of graphic plays (Shakespeare) and a kids’ story (to my nephews). Yours may be my first web- comic.
I think it’s a great medium. I’m completely in favor of any vehicle that tells good stories. I really love the fact that yours will likely tell the early Irish American story to a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise read it.
Thanks again to Maureen! Go out and get a copy of Irish America: Coming Into Clover as it’s a great and informative read!
