Literary Visions of Multicultural Ireland : The Immigrant in Contemporary Irish Literature

Literary visions of multicultural Ireland is the first full-length monograph in the market to address the impact that Celtic-Tiger immigration has exerted on the poetry, drama and fiction of contemporary Irish writers. The book opens with a lively, challenging preface by Prof. Declan Kiberd and is followed by eighteen essays by leading and prestigious scholars in the field of Irish studies from both sides of the Atlantic who address, in pioneering, differing and enriching ways, the emerging multiethnic character of Irish literature. Key areas of discussion are: What does it mean to be 'multicultural, ' and what are the implications of this condition for contemporary Irish writers? How has literature in Ireland responded to inward migration? Have Irish writers reflected in their work (either explicitly or implicitly) the existence of migrant communities in Ireland? If so, are elements of Irish traditional culture and community maintained or transformed? What is the social and political efficacy of these intercultural artistic visions? While these issues have received sustained academic attention in literary contexts with longer traditions of migration, they have yet to be extensively addressed in Ireland today. The collection will thus be of interest to students and academics of contemporary literature as well as the general reader willing to learn more about Ireland and Irish culture. Overall, this book will become most useful to scholars working in Irish studies, contemporary Irish literature, multiculturalism, migration, globalisation and transculturality. Writers discussed include Hugo Hamilton, Roddy Doyle, Colum McCann, {acute}Eil{acute}is N{acute}i Dhuibhne, Dermot Bolger, Chris Binchy, Michael O'Loughlin, Emer Martin and Kate O'Riordan, amongst others Front matter Contents List of contributors Foreword: the worlding of Irish writing Acknowledgements Introduction: the immigrant in contemporary Irish literature Part I Irish multiculturalisms: obstacles and challenges White Irish-born male playwrights and the immigrant experience onstage Strangers in a strange land?: the new Irish multicultural fiction ‘A nation of Others’: the immigrant in contemporary Irish poetry Immigration in Celtic Tiger and post-Celtic Tiger novels Part II ‘Rethinking Ireland’ as a postnationalist community ‘Who is Irish?’: Roddy Doyle’s hyphenated identities ‘Our identity is our own instability’: intercultural exchanges and the redefinition of identity in Hugo Hamilton’s Disguise and Hand in the Fire ‘Many and terrible are the roads to home’: representations of the immigrant in the contemporary Irish short story Writing the ‘new Irish’ into Ireland’s old narratives: the poetry of Sinéad Morrissey, Leontia Flynn, Mary O’Malley, and Michael Hayes Part III ‘The return of the repressed’: ‘performing’ Irishness through intercultural encounters ‘Marooned men in foreign cities’: encounters with the Other in Dermot Bolger’s The Ballymun Trilogy ‘Like a foreigner / in my native land’: transculturality and Otherness in twenty-first-century Irish poetry Irish multicultural epiphanies: modernity and the recuperation of migrant memory in the writing of Hugo Hamilton The Parts: whiskey, tea, and sympathy Hospitality and hauteur: tourism, cross-cultural space, and ethics in Irish poetry Part IV Gender and the city Towards a multiracial Ireland: Black Baby’s revision of Irish motherhood Beginning history again: gendering the foreigner in Emer Martin’s Baby Zero ‘Goodnight and joy be with you all’: tales of contemporary Dublin city life Mean streets, new lives: the representations of non-Irish immigrants in recent Irish crime fiction Index Literary visions of multicultural Ireland is the first full-length monograph in the market to address the impact that Celtic-Tiger immigration has exerted on the poetry, drama and fiction of contemporary Irish writers. The book opens with a lively, challenging preface by Prof. Declan Kiberd and is followed by eighteen essays by leading and prestigious scholars in the field of Irish studies from both sides of the Atlantic who address, in pioneering, differing and enriching ways, the emerging multiethnic character of Irish literature. Key areas of discussion are: What does it mean to be 'multicultural, ' and what are the implications of this condition for contemporary Irish writers? How has literature in Ireland responded to inward migration? Have Irish writers reflected in their work (either explicitly or implicitly) the existence of migrant communities in Ireland? If so, are elements of Irish traditional culture and community maintained or transformed? What is the social and political efficacy of these intercultural artistic visions? While these issues have received sustained academic attention in literary contexts with longer traditions of migration, they have yet to be extensively addressed in Ireland today. The collection will thus be of interest to students and academics of contemporary literature as well as the general reader willing to learn more about Ireland and Irish culture. Overall, this book will become most useful to scholars working in Irish studies, contemporary Irish literature, multiculturalism, migration, globalisation and transculturality. Writers discussed include Hugo Hamilton, Roddy Doyle, Colum McCann, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Dermot Bolger, Chris Binchy, Michael O'Loughlin, Emer Martin and Kate O'Riordan, amongst others Now available in paperback, this pioneering collection of essays deals with the topic of how Irish literature responds to the presence of non-Irish immigrants in Celtic-Tiger and post-Celtic-Tiger Ireland. The book assembles an international group of 18 leading and prestigious academics in the field of Irish studies from both sides of the Atlantic, including Declan Kiberd, Anne Fogarty and Maureen T. Reddy, amongst others. Key areas of discussion are: what does it mean to be ‘multicultural'and what are the implications of this condition for contemporary Irish writers? How has literature in Ireland responded to inward migration? Have Irish writers reflected in their work (either explicitly or implicitly) the existence of migrant communities in Ireland? If so, are elements of Irish traditional culture and community maintained or transformed? What is the social and political efficacy of these intercultural artistic visions?