Download Irish-American Autobiography: The Divided Hearts of Athletes, Priests, Pilgrims, and More AudioBook Free
Irish-American Autobiography opens a new windowpane on the shifting meanings of Irishness over the 20th century, by looking at a range of works which have never before been considered as a distinct body of literature. Opening with super star memoirs from athletes like boxer John L. Sullivan and ballplayer Connie Mack - written when the Irish were wanting to put their raffish roots in it - later chapters track the countless tensions, often unspoken, listed by Irish Us citizens who've told their life experiences. New York saloonkeepers and South Boston step dancers placed themselves against the larger culture, arranging a pattern of being on the outside looking in. Even the common 1950s TV humor The Honeymooners speaks to the metropolitan Irish roots, and the poignant sense of exclusion noticed by its inventor Jackie Gleason. Catholicism, so key to the id of earlier generations of Irish Us citizens, has also advanced. One chapter looks at the agonizing diffidence of priest autobiographers, while others uncover how traditional Irish Catholic ideas of the guardian angel and pilgrimage have advanced and stayed strong down to our own time. Irish-American Autobiography becomes, in the end, a story of a continued seek out interconnection - documenting an "ethnic fade" that never quite took place. The publication is pubished from the Catholic University or college of America Press.
