Description: Irish Migrants in New Communities: Seeking the Fair Land? examines the interactions of Irish migrants and the new societies and experiences that opened up to them through the process of emigration and exile. The contributors' chapters focus on oral history perspectives to exam...
Brief description: Malcolm Campbell was previously Reader in Greek at the University of St Andrews, UK. His numerous publications on Greek literature include commentaries on Apollonius Rhodius, Moschus and Quintus Smyrnaeus, and a lexicon to Triphiodorus.
Review Quotes:
"Máirtín Ó Catháin and Mícheál Ó hAodha's Irish Migrants in New Communities: Seeking the Fair Land? is an eclectic collection of fascinating essays on a varied and sometimes motley crew of Irish emigrants, castaways, missionaries, and external and internal 'exiles, ' ranging from Terence Connell, 'King of the Horrifories' in New Guinea, to Irish-American labor leader Michael Mooney, nearly lynched by Colorado's right-wing vigilantes, to Bobby Sands in his lesser-known role as Long Kesh guitarist and song-writer. This is a book of stories about people sometimes forgotten by their own descendants, and often betrayed and traduced by History's 'winners, ' but now recovered to edify a new generation of Irishmen and -women who are forced once more, by their economic and political overlords, to 'seek the fair land' outside Ireland." --Kerby Miller, University of Missouri
"Irish Migrants in New Communities: Seeking the Fair Land? contains an eclectic assortment of tales of the Irish experience of emigration. It gives a voice to a host of almost forgotten migrants (nuns, miners, seafaring vagabonds, and soldiers), tracing their complex relationship with the lands of their birth and adoption. This collection is an unexpected pot of gold, its ten chapters expertly interrogating the theme of exile, what it meant to be Irish, and what was lost in the leaving of Ireland." --Rory Sweetman, University of Otago "Like the pioneering spirit evinced by its subjects, this collection of essays explores and uncovers striking new evidence about the formidable reach of the Irish diaspora. In doing so, it reaffirms for Irish migration studies the centrality of personal narrative in its many guises, whether it is oral testimony, letters, folklore, ballads, or diaries, as an indispensable source for comprehending and evaluating migrant consciousness." --Tony Murray, London Metropolitan University