Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK Anxiety, Assimilation, and Activism

Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK addresses the concerns of Irish America in the post-war era by studying its fiction and the authors who brought the communities of their youth to life on the page.  With few exceptions, the novels studied here are lesser-known works, with little written about them to date. Mining these tremendous resources for the details of Irish American life, this book looks back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when the authors' immigrant grandparents were central to their communities.  It also points forward to the twenty-first century, as the concerns these authors had for the future of Irish America have become a legacy we must grapple with in the present.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Memory, History, and the Shaping of the Irish American Present.- Chapter 2 On why this book should and should not begin with Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.- Chapter 3 Edward McSorley and Irish America's Coming of Age.- Chapter 4 A Community Deformed in Mary Doyle Curran's The Parish and the Hill.- Chapter 5 “Good Catholic Radicals”: Harry Sylvester's Moon Gaffney and Irish American Catholicism at Mid-Century.- Chapter 6 How the Other Half Lives: Ellin Berlin’s Lace Curtain.- Chapter 7 John Steinbeck’s Irish Grandfather: Samuel Hamilton, East of Eden, and Post World War II Irish American Fiction.- Chapter 8 The Last Hurrah for a Way of Life: The Private Side of Edwin O’Connor’s Famous Novel.- Conclusion - Communities in Jeopardy.

Beth O’Leary Anish is a Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island, USA. She successfully defended her dissertation, Writing Irish America: Communal Memory and the Narrative of Nation in Diaspora, at the University of Rhode Island.  She has been published in the New Hibernia Review, and is an active member of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Her research interests are in American immigrant literature, contemporary Irish literature, and Irish American fiction and memoir.