Home & Ancestral Understanding: A Perspective on Irish Emigration (Part II)
“I was raised in an Irish American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840s, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish Nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on.” — Tom Hayden
I have learned myself this year that while being born in a particular country offers us a given connection, it does not necessarily infer a relationship to our birth place. We cannot take for granted the power of relating. To be in relation, rather than to have a connection, to a land means that we establish and develop an active relationship to it — we get to know the land on a personal level. Here we are considering the difference between a cerebral and passive connection, and a deeper, felt relationship. Most of us, in attempting to express our national pride, try to get to the matter via thinking. This often results in a failure of language. When I speak of developing a relationship to a place, I am talking about something far greater than the default connection which one is given via birth.
In order to feel a deep, rooted, and heart-felt connection to a place, one has to establish a relationship with it. This has to begin with a relationship to a specific locality. Just as we cannot get to know all Irish people in Ireland at once, so too are we unable to establish a relationship to the entire country at once. Rather, we must begin with getting to know one Irish person, or one specific locality (which admittedly retains some ambiguity). It is through a relation with this person or place that we get a glimpse of the wider culture.
When I speak of relationship, I mean this in an animistic sense. I’m talking about building a connection to a local place in the same way we build a connection to another human. We meet, introduce ourselves, and continue to spend time together, strengthening our connection with each meeting. You can in fact connect and relate to the land you live upon, just like you would with any human relationship. This real relation is what gives us a holistic and overwhelming sense of relation to a place. Many of our ancestors learned this type of relation to the Earth by necessity, for the land they lived on gave them everything they ate and owned. There was nothing of value in their lives that did not come from, or was not sustained by, the land.
How painful it must have been for Famine emigrants then, to be forced to leave their homeland, the place that was surely rooted to their hearts. And indeed, then to be forced to hide or even refuse their Irishness in order to fit in. The consideration of Irish emigration to America is particularly interesting to me, due to the somewhat discordant relationship between Americans of Irish descent and native-born Irish. Today there are roughly 34 million Americans who are primarily or partially of Irish descent. The population of Ireland today, conversely, has still not returned to its pre-Famine peak of over 8.2 million.
Irish-Americans in particular suffer a lot of grief from native-born Irish people, in comparison to other diaspora. This might well be a surprise to read, because the majority of it occurs away from the presence of its subject. Irish people are generally very warm and welcoming to tourists of all kinds. But we are not saints, and it has been my obversation that culturally, we also have a tendency to be somewhat duplicitous (most often amongst ourselves). Many will be familiar with the phrase “Plastic Paddy”, which is employed in many contexts. Indeed, it is true that Irish culture is very susceptible to appropriation and stereotype. St. Patrick’s Day celebrations are a great illustration of this. News reports show us the spectacle of Irish-American spirit on display all across the US. To many, while it might all seem like good fun, it is also undoubtedly a bit over-the-top. In America, of course, we come to expect that things are bigger, louder, and bolder. In Ireland, modesty is highly valued (a hangover from times of lack) and this goes so far as to produce a disdain towards any group of people who appear particularly vociferous (again, this applies also to inter-native relations).
Consider the example of Chicago dying its river green. Most Irish people seeing that might think “well, we don’t go to that much trouble ourselves”. We also see an explosion of kitsch clothing/accessories, aimed at costume-lovers for parties that nobody in Ireland is going to. These discrepancies work to create an unsettling dissonance between Ireland and wider Irish culture. Of course, just because one is born in Ireland does not mean one is “more Irish”, or more “connected” to the country than one who isn’t. Neither are these even things we can reasonably quantify. Nor does it mean one has any authority on how some else expresses their identity. Nevertheless, there is a dissonance here.
The tangled threads involved range from a strange sense of exclusivity, to a difference of personality between Irish and Americans, in a most general sense (see above re Paddy’s Day); from an unfortunate lack of understanding and cultural appropriation, to an ignorance of the true and pervasive depth of ancestral connection. Perhaps there is, even, an overhanging sense of resentment from the past, when one friend or family member left for the new world, while the other is left behind. Stories of this kind from the `1840s are not uncommon. The fact is, it is hard to know how deep our ancestral traumas lie.
There is a sense in Ireland of apathy and even mild annoyance regarding Irish-Americans, I think largely due to the frequency with which Americans express their Irish ancestry, in one way or another. This frequency is an inevitability, because, as we have made note, there are well over 30 million such people. Of course we are going to hear of Americans, again and again, citing their Irish ancestry. There can be no other expectation. Unfortunately, this repetition has turned the focus of many toward our differences, instead of our similarities, as so many facets of our modern psychology does. But it if we can truly know a relationship to our land, and understand the significance of our ancestry, one finds their perspective changing. As I have developed my connection to the land, and in turn considered more and more the role of the ancestors, my thoughts and feelings have turned towards inviting a greater understanding of the powerful connections and similarities that exist between those of us born in Ireland, and those of us whose ancestors left her.
To consider the perspective of Americans of Irish descent, I spoke to Alexandra, who lives in California. Alexandra says her Mother made her aware of her ancestry when she was as young as five, and told her not to let anyone belittle her on account of her red hair. She remembers learning how to practice traditional Irish dancing, as a child. For Alexandra, the feeling of being connected to Ireland has always been present. “I think I’ve wanted to visit since I was a child… to find connection to roots, family, history. That is still something I want more of, to feel connected to my family history and traditions. When I am here in the US it does not feel like my land, because it isn’t. This is Native American land and I feel it deep inside me. I am thankful for living here but I am also aware of the pain brought to this land and Indigenous people by Europeans. Since visiting Ireland I have found more appreciation for my family and all Irish people.” This last sentence rings particularly resonantly for me, because my own experiences of emigration have given me the same: a greater appreciation for my family and all Irish people, native-born or otherwise.
Personally, being away from Ireland after having established a wider relationship with the land is difficult. Feeling that longing for home, I think of those ancestors who were forced to leave theirs, in order to give themselves and their families a chance of survival. I think of their grief and sorrow. And then it strikes me, the particular enthusiasm of Irish-Americans, towards the land of their mothers and fathers. I realise that these descendants of emigrants are bearers of the torch: they are the ones who hold the old unfulfilled desires of their ancestors to return home. A desire that is passed on through blood and bone. It strikes me then, that Irish-Americans who spend their trans-Atlantic flight to Dublin chatting excitedly about their plans, aren’t just caught up in some flippant attempt to belong; in fact they may be as surprised by their enthusiasm for a place they have never been as we are in hearing about it. Whether they are met with indifference or genuine friendliness, this person is living a life-dream. Indeed, they are living a dream shared through many lives, for it is a dream that I believe could very much have been passed down to them through their lineage. I realise then, that these people are giving to their ancestors what they may have wanted more than anything else: to go back home to Ireland. I have known myself that there is nothing in this world that feels quite as good as arriving home in Ireland.
