From the Sin-E Cafe to Black Hills: Notes on the New Irish

by Eamonn Wall

Overview

Eamonn Wall arrived in the United States in the 1980s as part of a wave of young, educated immigrants who became known as the "New Irish." In this book he comments on his own experiences and those of his generation, who identify as much with contemporary ethnic and immigrant America as they do with the long-settled Irish American community.
    Wall’s starting point is the now-closed Sin-é Café in New York’s East Village, which was a hangout in the early 1990s for expatriate Irish musicians, actors, and writers. He comments on the poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs of both the New Irish and Americans of Irish heritage, locating them within a literary and historical context. But this is also a deeply personal book in which Wall wrestles with his own identity as an Irishman living in America, raising his children as Americans and learning to love the American landscape, from the streets of Manhattan to the western hills of Nebraska.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299167240
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	02/07/2000
Pages:	154
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
1	Exile, Attitude, and the Sin-e Cafe: Notes on the New Irish	3
2	The Long Journey Home to Brooklyn: Michael Stephens's Books of the Dead	14
3	Immigration, Technology, and Sense of Place	23
4	Reading Mary Gordon's Final Payments in America	30
5	Four Paintings by Danny Maloney: A Short Story	39
6	The Search for Majestic Shades: Contemporary American Poets Migrate to Ireland	46
7	Helena Mulkerns on the Lower East Side	58
8	Irish Voices, American Writing, and Green Cards	69
9	Roger Boylan in His Own Words: Q & A	81
10	"Even Better Than the Real Thing": Brian Moore's The Great Victorian Collection	91
11	How Decent People Live: Thomas McGonigle's Going to Patchogue	103
12	The Black Hills, the Gorey Road, and Object Lessons	109
	Works Cited	127
	Index	135