Awards

• Winner of Honorable Mention, 2023 Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize.
• Winner of Honorable Mention, 2023 McGowan Prize (IACI) Honorable Mention, 2023 Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize (ACIS).

Overview

Figures from the Scots-Irish Andrew Jackson to the Caribbean-Irish Rihanna, as well as literature, film, caricature, and beauty discourse, convey how the Irish racially transformed multiple times: in the slave-holding Caribbean, on America's frontiers and antebellum plantations, and along its eastern seaboard. This cultural history of race and centuries of Irishness in the Americas examines the forcibly transported Irish, the eighteenth-century Presbyterian Ulster-Scots, and post-1845 Famine immigrants. Their racial transformations are indicated by the designations they acquired in the Americas: 'Redlegs,' 'Scots-Irish,' and 'black Irish.' In literature by Fitzgerald, O'Neill, Mitchell, Glasgow, and Yerby (an African-American author of Scots-Irish heritage), the Irish are both colluders and victims within America's racial structure. Depictions range from Irish encounters with Native and African Americans to competition within America's immigrant hierarchy between 'Saxon' Scots-Irish and 'Celtic' Irish Catholic. Irish-connected presidents feature, but attention to queer and multiracial authors, public women, beauty professionals, and performers complicates the 'Irish whitening' narrative. Thus, 'Irish Princess' Grace Kelly's globally-broadcast ascent to royalty paves the way for 'America's royals,' the Kennedys. The presidencies of the Scots-Irish Jackson and Catholic-Irish Kennedy signalled their respective cohorts' assimilation. Since Gothic literature particularly expresses the complicity that attaining power ('whiteness') entails, subgenres named 'Scots-Irish Gothic' and 'Kennedy Gothic' are identified: in Gothic by Brown, Poe, James, Faulkner, and Welty, the violence of the colonial Irish motherland is visited upon marginalized Americans, including, sometimes, other Irish groupings. History is Gothic in Irish-American narrative because the undead Irish past replays within America's contexts of race.

Full Product Details

9780192859730

Table of Contents

Reviews

"this is an innovative, thought-provoking book that employs rich historical framings for its literary analysis. The book's uncovering of what might be called a ""disguised Irish experience"" in the work of a number of well-known American writers not generally thought of as ""Irish"" is intellectually stimulating and will, we predict, be a building block for further work. * James Donnelly, Chair of McGowan Prize (IACI) * Burke confronts the racial dynamics ever-present—but acknowledged to varying degrees—in works by authors whose ancestors may have been considered ""off white"" or ethnic others themselves. Burke presents her readers with ew ways of considering the Irishness of canonical American authors such as Henry James, William Faulkner, and Edgar Allan Poe, while also introducing a wider audience to less studied authors such as Frank Yerby, who was of mixed African and Irish descent. In so doing she establishes a new sub-genre, the Scots-Irish gothic. This book will be of value to scholars of Irish Studies and American literature, as it makes important new claims in these overlapping fields. * Matthew Reznicek, Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize (ACIS) * Race, Politics, and Irish America is of value because it refuses and exposes the homogeneous treatment of the Irish (as all descended from Famine refugees) in Irish American literary criticism. The book acts as a corrective for three prominent areas of scholarship...It provides a narrative in its own right that complements whiteness studies by bringing in a literary approach and an impressively nuanced view of the history of various groups in Ireland and America. * Beth O'Leary Anish, Community College of Rhode Island, Irish University Review * Burke's book is an exciting, necessary contribution to both Irish Studies and American literary studies. She impressively distills complicated histories on both sides of the Atlantic into comprehensible chunks, and then deftly applies that history to a range of texts, most with previously ignored Irish elements at the base of their protagonists' race and class anxieties. * Beth O'Leary Anish, Community College of Rhode Island, Irish University Review * Race, Politics, and Irish America makes a compelling argument for seeing ethnic identity as every bit as key to understanding Fitzgerald as his self-doubts over his class status and literary standing. * Kirk Curnutt, F. Scott Fitzgerald Review * For those of us who struggle with the contradiction of being Irish-American - how our ancestors, who were near the bottom of every racial hierarchy, came to side with their oppressors - Mary Burke's book is essential reading. Viewed through a Gothic lens with a focus on political, literary and artistic figures, Professor Burke's book connects the dots across five centuries of Irish history in the Americas. * Tim Quinn, BiblioCommons * Mary M. Burke has written a book that the field of Irish Studies in the United States will find hard to ignore or dismiss. * Peter McDermott, Irish Echo * A ""luminous new study...[that] explores centuries of competing narratives about the Irish in America."" * Cahir O'Doherty, Irish Central * This generic breadth helps Burke create a rich, nuanced, and complex picture of what it means to be Irish...Compellingly, Burke includes performers, ""public women,"" and queer and multiracial authors in her analyses and thus rejects the traditional focus on straight, white, male authors. She promises, and delivers, a rich, rewarding, and challenging read...this powerful and timely examination of race and politics in Irish America challenges many stereotypes and frames well-known authors, celebrities, and politicians in a way that brings new understanding to them and their Irish identities. Burke is to be congratulated for producing such a fine, wide-ranging, and broadly appealing study. * Christine Kinealy, Eugene O'Neill Review * Burke's deeply researched and wide-ranging book provides a roadmap for future scholars to examine with far greater nuance than was previously the case the complexity of Irish identities in the United States. * Sin'ead Moynihan, Irish Studies Review *"

"this is an innovative, thought-provoking book that employs rich historical framings for its literary analysis. The book's uncovering of what might be called a ""disguised Irish experience"" in the work of a number of well-known American writers not generally thought of as ""Irish"" is intellectually stimulating and will, we predict, be a building block for further work. * James Donnelly, Chair of McGowan Prize (IACI) * Burke confronts the racial dynamics ever-present—but acknowledged to varying degrees—in works by authors whose ancestors may have been considered ""off white"" or ethnic others themselves. Burke presents her readers with ew ways of considering the Irishness of canonical American authors such as Henry James, William Faulkner, and Edgar Allan Poe, while also introducing a wider audience to less studied authors such as Frank Yerby, who was of mixed African and Irish descent. In so doing she establishes a new sub-genre, the Scots-Irish gothic. This book will be of value to scholars of Irish Studies and American literature, as it makes important new claims in these overlapping fields. * Matthew Reznicek, Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize (ACIS) * Race, Politics, and Irish America is of value because it refuses and exposes the homogeneous treatment of the Irish (as all descended from Famine refugees) in Irish American literary criticism. The book acts as a corrective for three prominent areas of scholarship...It provides a narrative in its own right that complements whiteness studies by bringing in a literary approach and an impressively nuanced view of the history of various groups in Ireland and America. * Beth O'Leary Anish, Community College of Rhode Island, Irish University Review * Burke's book is an exciting, necessary contribution to both Irish Studies and American literary studies. She impressively distills complicated histories on both sides of the Atlantic into comprehensible chunks, and then deftly applies that history to a range of texts, most with previously ignored Irish elements at the base of their protagonists' race and class anxieties. * Beth O'Leary Anish, Community College of Rhode Island, Irish University Review * Race, Politics, and Irish America makes a compelling argument for seeing ethnic identity as every bit as key to understanding Fitzgerald as his self-doubts over his class status and literary standing. * Kirk Curnutt, F. Scott Fitzgerald Review * For those of us who struggle with the contradiction of being Irish-American - how our ancestors, who were near the bottom of every racial hierarchy, came to side with their oppressors - Mary Burke's book is essential reading. Viewed through a Gothic lens with a focus on political, literary and artistic figures, Professor Burke's book connects the dots across five centuries of Irish history in the Americas. * Tim Quinn, BiblioCommons * Mary M. Burke has written a book that the field of Irish Studies in the United States will find hard to ignore or dismiss. * Peter McDermott, Irish Echo * A ""luminous new study...[that] explores centuries of competing narratives about the Irish in America."" * Cahir O'Doherty, Irish Central * This generic breadth helps Burke create a rich, nuanced, and complex picture of what it means to be Irish...Compellingly, Burke includes performers, ""public women,"" and queer and multiracial authors in her analyses and thus rejects the traditional focus on straight, white, male authors. She promises, and delivers, a rich, rewarding, and challenging read...this powerful and timely examination of race and politics in Irish America challenges many stereotypes and frames well-known authors, celebrities, and politicians in a way that brings new understanding to them and their Irish identities. Burke is to be congratulated for producing such a fine, wide-ranging, and broadly appealing study. * Christine Kinealy, Eugene O'Neill Review * Burke's deeply researched and wide-ranging book provides a roadmap for future scholars to examine with far greater nuance than was previously the case the complexity of Irish identities in the United States. * Sinéad Moynihan, Irish Studies Review * The text is most enlightening when read as a linear whole, to understand the messy evolution of 'white' Irishness in a racially divided America. * Ciara Smart, Australasian Journal of Irish studies *"

Race, Politics, and Irish America is of value because it refuses and exposes the homogeneous treatment of the Irish (as all descended from Famine refugees) in Irish American literary criticism. The book acts as a corrective for three prominent areas of scholarship...It provides a narrative in its own right that complements whiteness studies by bringing in a literary approach and an impressively nuanced view of the history of various groups in Ireland and America. * Beth O'Leary Anish, Community College of Rhode Island, Irish University Review *

Author Information

"Mary M. Burke publishes widely on Irish and Irish American culture, minorities, and identities. Her first book with Oxford, ""Tinkers"": Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller, was published in 2009, and her collaboration with Tramp Press on the Juanita Casey Horse of Selene reissue appeared in 2022. Her public-facing and creative work has placed with NPR, the Irish Times, RTÉ, and Faber, and she has formerly been University of Notre Dame NEH Keough-Naughton Fellow, Trinity College Dublin LHR Visiting Fellow, MLA Irish Literature Committee chair, and NE-ACIS President. She is a graduate of TCD and Queen's University, Belfast."

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