Mother Ireland

Mother Ireland PDF Author: Edna O'Brien
Publisher: Plume Books
ISBN: 9780452280502
Category : Authors, Irish
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Mother Ireland" includes seven essays seamlessly woven into an autobiographical tapestry. In her lyrical, sensuous voice, O'Brien describes growing up in rural County Clare, from her days in a convent school to her first kiss to her eventual migration to England. Weaving her own personal history with the history of Ireland, she effortlessly melds local customs and ancient lore with the fascinating people and events that shaped he young life. The result is a colorful and timeless narrative that perfectly captures the heart and soul of this harshly beautiful country.

Mother Ireland

Mother Ireland PDF Author: Edna O'Brien
Publisher: Plume Books
ISBN: 9780452280502
Category : Authors, Irish
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Mother Ireland" includes seven essays seamlessly woven into an autobiographical tapestry. In her lyrical, sensuous voice, O'Brien describes growing up in rural County Clare, from her days in a convent school to her first kiss to her eventual migration to England. Weaving her own personal history with the history of Ireland, she effortlessly melds local customs and ancient lore with the fascinating people and events that shaped he young life. The result is a colorful and timeless narrative that perfectly captures the heart and soul of this harshly beautiful country.

Mothers of Ireland

Mothers of Ireland PDF Author: Julie Kane
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807173142
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 71

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Book Description
Celebrated poet Julie Kane returns to her Boston Irish Catholic roots in this collection about mothers and daughters shaped by the forces of Irish history and Irish-­American culture. Mothers of Ireland confronts how the legacy of personal trauma gets passed down to subsequent generations, with a focus on women from her family history and their paths of both pain and endurance. Kane’s verse reverberates with the lives of her ancestors and the lasting impacts of famine, poverty, repressive religion, ethnic prejudice, and alcoholism. The poems are formal—villanelles, ghazals, sonnets, sestinas, and the like—but their language is fresh and rich with the sound of contemporary spoken English. Coming from a culture that values music, storytelling, and the oral poetic tradition, Kane uses rhyme and rhythm to move the body as well as the mind. Even at their darkest, these haunting poems flash with resilient Irish wit.

The Adoption Machine

The Adoption Machine PDF Author: Paul Jude Redmond
Publisher: Merrion Press
ISBN: 1785371797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
MAY 2014. The Irish public woke to the horrific discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of most 800 babies in the ‘Angels’ Plot’ of Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home. What followed would rock the last vestiges of Catholic Ireland, enrage an increasingly secularised nation, and lead to a Commission of Inquiry. In The Adoption Machine, Paul Jude Redmond, Chairperson of the Coalition of Mother and Baby Homes Survivors, who himself was born in the Castlepollard Home, candidly reveals the shocking history of one of the worst abuses of Church power since the foundation of the Irish State. From Bessboro, Castlepollard, and Sean Ross Abbey to St. Patrick’s and Tuam, a dark shadow was cast by the collusion between Church and State in the systematic repression of women and the wilful neglect of illegitimate babies, resulting in the deaths of thousands. It was Paul’s exhaustive research that widened the global media’s attention to all the homes and revealed Tuam as just the tip of the iceberg of the horrors that lay beneath. He further reveals the vast profits generated by selling babies to wealthy adoptive parents, and details how infants were volunteered to a pharmaceutical company for drug trials without the consent of their natural mothers. Interwoven throughout is Paul’s poignant and deeply personal journey of discovery as he attempts to find his own natural mother. The Adoption Machine exposes this dark history of Ireland’s shameful and secret past, and the efforts to bring it into the light. It is a history from which there is no turning away.

Mothers of Ireland

Mothers of Ireland PDF Author: Julie Kane
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807173150
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 69

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Book Description
Celebrated poet Julie Kane returns to her Boston Irish Catholic roots in this collection about mothers and daughters shaped by the forces of Irish history and Irish-­American culture. Mothers of Ireland confronts how the legacy of personal trauma gets passed down to subsequent generations, with a focus on women from her family history and their paths of both pain and endurance. Kane’s verse reverberates with the lives of her ancestors and the lasting impacts of famine, poverty, repressive religion, ethnic prejudice, and alcoholism. The poems are formal—villanelles, ghazals, sonnets, sestinas, and the like—but their language is fresh and rich with the sound of contemporary spoken English. Coming from a culture that values music, storytelling, and the oral poetic tradition, Kane uses rhyme and rhythm to move the body as well as the mind. Even at their darkest, these haunting poems flash with resilient Irish wit.

Republic of Shame

Republic of Shame PDF Author: Caelainn Hogan
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1844884465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
'At least in The Handmaid's Tale they value babies, mostly. Not so in the true stories here' Margaret Atwood '[A] furious, necessary book' Sinéad Gleeson Until alarmingly recently, the Catholic Church, acting in concert with the Irish state, operated a network of institutions for the concealment, punishment and exploitation of 'fallen women'. In the Magdalene laundries, girls and women were incarcerated and condemned to servitude. And in the mother-and-baby homes, women who had become pregnant out of wedlock were hidden from view, and in most cases their babies were adopted - sometimes illegally. Mortality rates in these institutions were shockingly high, and the discovery of a mass infant grave at the mother-and-baby home in Tuam made news all over the world. The Irish state has commissioned investigations. But the workings of the institutions and of the culture that underpinned it - a shame-industrial complex - have long been cloaked in secrecy and silence. For countless people, a search for answers continues. Caelainn Hogan - a brilliant young journalist, born in an Ireland that was only just starting to free itself from the worst excesses of Catholic morality - has been talking to the survivors of the institutions, to members of the religious orders that ran them, and to priests and bishops. She has visited the sites of the institutions, and studied Church and state documents that have much to reveal about how they operated. Reporting and writing with great curiosity, tenacity and insight, she has produced a startling and often moving account of how an entire society colluded in this repressive system, and of the damage done to survivors and their families. In the great tradition of Anna Funder's Stasiland and Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea - both winners of the Samuel Johnson Prize - Republic of Shame is an astounding portrait of a deeply bizarre culture of control. 'Achingly powerful ... There will be many people who don't want to read Republic of Shame, for fear it will be too much, too dark, too heavy. Please don't be afraid. Read it. Look it in the eye' Irish Times 'A must read for everyone' Lynn Ruane 'Republic of Shame is a careful, sensitive and extremely well-written book - but it is harrowing. It would break your heart in two' Ailbhe Smyth 'Hogan's captivatingly written stories of people who were consigned to what she calls the "shame-industrial complex" puts faces - many old now, and lined with pain - to the clinical data ... Brilliant' Sunday Times 'Utterly brilliant. Please read it' Marian Keyes 'Riveting, immensely insightful and horrifically recognisable' Emma Dabiri '[A] sensitive, can't-look-away book ... Through moving stories, Hogan shows how the past is still present' NPR

I Called Her Mary

I Called Her Mary PDF Author: Thomas Gorman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578981932
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Peg Holland became pregnant as a teenager in a conservative village in 1950s Ireland. She knew her life would never be the same again. She was sent away in shame only to find courage and wisdom deep within her soul that led her to the greatest life, husband, and family.Being poor and not having many options, Peg's parents sent her to Sean Ross Abbey to deliver the baby. After her baby, Mary, is born, Peg and Mary are heckled and ridiculed by townspeople for ninth months until Peg decides she must give Mary up for adoption so she can have a better life. This decision haunts her the rest of her life. Having nothing left to keep her in Ireland, Peg leaves home to work as an indentured servant for a family in America. Mick O'Hagan is swept away by Peg and wants to marry her. She refuses due to the secret of her baby that no one knows about. After seeking advice, Peg's mother tells her to not start her new life off with a lie and to tell Mick everything if she truly loves him.Fifty years after the birth of Mary, Peg receives a phone call from her daughter. They are reunited and the family only grows bigger and stronger because of their love. They share many stories of what each other missed out on but as the stories are told new details emerge. The story that Peg told of the adoption and giving Mary away don't match up to the letters documents that Mary possesses. After Mick's passing, Peg cleans out the closets and stumbles across these documents that Mary shared with her. Fighting past the trauma of giving Mary up at such a young age, memories come flooding back and a new truth of what actually happened comes to light - Mary lived with the nuns at the abbey for a year. On the back deck, Peg and Mary continue their beautiful relationship and reflect upon how wonderful, despite all the heartache, their lives turned out.

The Light In The Window

The Light In The Window PDF Author: June Goulding
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448146143
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
'I promised that I would one day write a book and tell the world about the home for unmarried mothers. I have at last kept my promise.' In Ireland, 1951, the young June Goulding took up a position as midwife in a home for unmarried mothers run by the Sacred Heart nuns. What she witnessed there was to haunt her for the next fifty years. It was a place of secrets, lies and cruelty. A place where women picked grass by hand and tarred roads whilst heavily pregnant. Where they were denied any contact with the outside world; denied basic medical treatment and abused for their 'sins'; where, after the birth, they were forced into hard labour in the convent for three years. But worst of all was that the young women were expected to raise their babies during these three years so that they could then be sold - given up for adoption in exchange for a donation to the nuns. Shocked by the nuns' inhumane treatment of the frightened young women, June risked her job to bring some light into their dark lives. June's memoir tells the story of twelve women's experiences in this home and of the hardships they endured, but also the kindness she offered them, and the hope she was able to bring.

Motherhood in Ireland

Motherhood in Ireland PDF Author: Patricia Kennedy
Publisher: Mercier Press Ltd
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Motherhood has been used as a political, social and cultural symbol in Ireland. In fact, the role of mother was institutionalised in the 1937 Irish Constitution. This book brings together creative and critical writings on motherhood in Ireland in an attempt to understand its complexity.

Banished Babies

Banished Babies PDF Author: Mike Milotte
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781848403727
Category : Adoption
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Dublin, summer 1980; Kate Bush is on the radio, Nadia Comaneci is cleaning up at the Olympics and in one house by the Liffey, a spiky but sensitive ten-year-old girl is minding her troubled ma and her two brothers. But when a tragedy splits the family apart, the girl realizes that the only person she can depend on is herself.

What Else Could I Do?

What Else Could I Do? PDF Author: Clíona Rattigan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780716531401
Category : Infanticide
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This powerful book - now available in paperback - explores the history of single mothers and infanticide in Ireland over a 50 year period. Based primarily on underused archival material from the Central Criminal Court in the National Archives of Ireland, 'What Else Could I Do?' provides a detailed analysis of the diverse experiences of unmarried mothers who faced criminal charges because they were suspected of having committed infanticide. Although statistics relating to female perpetrators of serious forms of crime are examined, the history of single women who killed their illegitimate infants cannot be understood through official numbers alone. The book undertakes a detailed ~case-by-case analysis of the records of over 300 infanticide cases tried in Ireland - both North and South - during the first half of the 20th century. This timely study makes an important contribution to historical scholarship and adds considerably to existing knowledge of female criminal behavior in Ireland. It is also a major contribution to the historical understanding of gender relations, class, sexuality, and family life.