Are my Stars from Ireland? Reflections on an Irish-American Experience

Abstract

This essay has given me a lot of trouble. It is not because I have never reflected on my Irish-American experience. To the contrary. I have explored it in myriad ways – from attending the School of Irish Studies in Dublin as an undergraduate, getting an M.A. in Anglo-Irish Studies from Leeds University, editing a book actually titled The Irish in America, all before discovering, at age 50, that my birth parents were very Irish-American indeed, my father, a Gallagher, first-generation from the village of Glenties in Donegal, my mother from a Mayo line of Bradleys. It is true to say that I have in some fashion embraced the Irish-American identity (ask my wife): I look the part, wearing tweed and wool and favoring Guinness; I’ve read the great poets, from Yeats to Trevor Joyce. Decidedly unmusical, I did nonetheless try once to learn how to play “the bones.” I have published a book of poems that sound (alas) Muldoonish, a story about my unknown father loosely based on Book III of Ulysses, and two years ago a book about Samuel Beckett. But today, this issue of identity troubles me immensely. To surmise why this is so is all I can do.