Author: W. H. A. Williams
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252065514
Category : Irish
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
The image of the Irish in the United States changed drastically over time, from that of hard-drinking, rioting Paddies to genial, patriotic working-class citizens. In 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream, William H. A. Williams traces the change in this image through more than 700 pieces of sheet music--popular songs from the stage and for the parlor--to show how Americans' opinions of Ireland and the Irish went practically from one extreme to the other. Because sheet music was a commercial item it had to be acceptable to the broadest possible song-buying public. "Negotiations" about their image involved Irish songwriters, performers, and pressured groups, on the one hand, and non-Irish writers, publishers, and audiences on the other. Williams ties the contents of song lyrics to the history of the Irish diaspora, suggesting how ethnic stereotypes are created and how they evolve within commercial popular culture.
Author: Maureen Dezell
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 038549596X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Old-time politics, piety, and St. Patrick’s Day parades loom large when the Irish come to the American mind. None truly represents the complex legacy or contributions of the nation’s oldest ethnic group, who rank among the most highly educated and affluent Americans today. In Irish America, Maureen Dezell takes a new and invigorating look at Americans of Irish Catholic ancestry—who they are, and how they got that way. A welcome antidote to so many standard-issue, sentimental representations of the Irish in the United States, Irish America focuses on popular culture as well as politics; the Irish in the Midwest and West as well as the East; the “new Irish” immigrants; the complicated role of the Church today; and the unheralded heritage of Irish American women. Deftly weaving history, reporting, and the observations of more than 100 men and women of Irish descent on both sides of the Atlantic, Dezell presents an insightful and highly readable portrait of a people and a culture.
Author: Michael Quinlin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493004530
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
The fascinating story of the Irish in Boston unfolds in this engagingly written history-cum-guidebook. Full of heroism and romance, politics and brawls, it tells the stories behind the well-known history and vividly portrays what life was like for the Harrigans, Gallaghers, Kelleys, Finnegans and others who made their home in Boston over the past three centuries. From the days of "No Irish Need Apply" in the 1850s to the inauguration in 1960 of the first Irish Catholic president, the Boston Irish have molded the history of the city--and the nation--in all areas of culture and society, and their spirited tale is told in these pages. The cast of characters includes such larger-than-life personalities as *Hugh O'Brien, Boston's first Irish Catholic mayor (1885) *John Singleton Copley, America's first great portrait painter *Louis Sullivan, the father of American Architecture, born in Boston's South End in 1856, *Brendan Connolly, the first top medalist in the modern Olympic Games (1896) *John L. Sullivan, world heavyweight boxing champion *Patrick Kennedy and Bridget Murphy, progenitors of the Kennedy political dynasty Those who want to do more than just read about the saga of the Irish in Boston will also find information on dozens of Irish-related historic and cultural sites, such as the Irish Famine Memorial, the Civil War Monument, St. Augustine's Cemetery, the Irish Cultural Centre, the JFK Library, and the pub where Seamus Heaney and his buddies frequently enjoyed a pint. Also included is a directory of Irish gift shops, annual events, genealogical resources, Irish organizations, and Irish-related academic courses. This one-of-a-kind guide is a complete source for the total Irish experience, both past and present.
Author: M. Hallissy
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403983275
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
This book analyzes five novels, all published between 1989 and 1999, in which the main characters are 'hyphenated people': Americans who are ancestrally joined to, yet realistically separated from, the Irish. Hallissy explores why these characters think of themselves as Irish, though they have know little of Ireland or its people.
Author: Lawrence J. McCaffrey
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815605218
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
The "textures" of the Irish-American experience have been manifold, greatly influencing this country's economic, social, and cultural development over the past two centuries. Unlike that of many other European immigrants, the Irish journey to America was viewed largely as a one-way trip. They quickly adjusted to America, soon becoming citizens and active participants in politics. By the end of the 19th century, they dominated not only most American cities but also sports, especially baseball, and many were prominent in show business. In this entertaining study of one of America's most engaging and controversial groups, Lawrence McCaffrey reveals how the Irish adapted to urban life, progressing from unskilled working class to solid middle class. Denied power and influence in business and commerce, they achieved both through politics and the Catholic church. In addition to politicians and churchmen, McCaffrey discusses the roles of writers such as Finley Peter Dunne, James T. Farrell, Eugene O'Neill, J.F. Powers, Edwin O'Connor, William Kennedy, Elizabeth Cullinan, Tom Flanagan, Thomas Fleming, Jimmy Breslin, and John Gregory Dunne, as well as such film stars as Jimmy Cagney, Bing Crosby. Grace and Gene Kelly, and Spencer Tracy. McCaffrey completes the story with a look at the role of Irish nationalism in developing the personality of Irish America and in liberating Ireland from British colonialism. The result of some forty years of thinking and writing about Irish-American life, McCaffrey's Textures will appeal to scholars and general readers alike and may very well becomes the standard work on Irish America.
Author: Lauren Onkey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135165718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity analyzes the long history of imagined and real relationships between the Irish and African-Americans. Onkey examines how Irish and Irish-American identity is often constructed through or against African-Americans, mapping this through the work of writers, playwrights, political activists, and musicians.
Author: James R. Barrett
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101560592
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545
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Book Description
A lively, street-level history of turn-of-the-century urban life explores the Americanizing influence of the Irish on successive waves of migrants to the American city. In the newest volume in the award-winning Penguin History of American Life series, James R. Barrett chronicles how a new urban American identity was forged in the streets, saloons, churches, and workplaces of the American city. This process of “Americanization from the bottom up” was deeply shaped by the Irish. From Lower Manhattan to the South Side of Chicago to Boston’s North End, newer waves of immigrants and African Americans found it nearly impossible to avoid the Irish. While historians have emphasized the role of settlement houses and other mainstream institutions in Americanizing immigrants, Barrett makes the original case that the culture absorbed by newcomers upon reaching American shores had a distinctly Hibernian cast. By 1900, there were more people of Irish descent in New York City than in Dublin; more in the United States than in all of Ireland. But in the late nineteenth century, the sources of immigration began to shift, to southern and eastern Europe and beyond. Whether these newcomers wanted to save their souls, get a drink, find a job, or just take a stroll in the neighborhood, they had to deal with entrenched Irish Americans. Barrett reveals how the Irish vacillated between a progressive and idealistic impulse toward their fellow immigrants and a parochial defensiveness stemming from the hostility earlier generations had faced upon their own arrival in America. They imparted racist attitudes toward African Americans; they established ethnic “deadlines” across city neighborhoods; they drove other immigrants from docks, factories, and labor unions. Yet the social teachings of the Catholic Church, a sense of solidarity with the oppressed, and dark memories of poverty and violence in both Ireland and America ushered in a wave of progressive political activism that eventually embraced other immigrants. Drawing on contemporary sociological studies and diaries, newspaper accounts, and Irish American literature, The Irish Way illustrates how the interactions between the Irish and later immigrants on the streets, on the vaudeville stage, in Catholic churches, and in workplaces helped forge a multiethnic American identity that has a profound legacy in our cities today.
Author: Sean Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135204136
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
Focus: Irish Traditional Music is an introduction to the instrumental and vocal traditions of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as Irish music in the context of the Irish diaspora. Ireland's size relative to Britain or to the mainland of Europe is small, yet its impact on musical traditions beyond its shores has been significant, from the performance of jigs and reels in pub sessions as far-flung as Japan and Cape Town, to the worldwide phenomenon of Riverdance. Focus: Irish Traditional Music interweaves dance, film, language, history, and other interdisciplinary features of Ireland and its diaspora. The accompanying CD presents both traditional and contemporary sounds of Irish music at home and abroad.
Author: Michelle Granshaw
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609386698
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
A little over a century ago, the Irish in America were the targets of intense xenophobic anxiety. Much of that anxiety centered on their mobility, whether that was traveling across the ocean to the U.S., searching for employment in urban centers, mixing with other ethnic groups, or forming communities of their own. Granshaw argues that American variety theatre, a precursor to vaudeville, was a crucial battleground for these anxieties, as it appealed to both the fears and the fantasies that accompanied the rapid economic and social changes of the Gilded Age.
Author: J.J. Lee
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814752187
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 751
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Book Description
Explores the history of the Irish in America, offering an overview of Irish history, immigration to the United States, and the transition of the Irish from the working class to all levels of society.
