Conocimiento: Writing Irish Borderlands

« In an era when borders that previously defined Irish literature – whether spatial, social or of the body - demand renewed interrogation, Eamonn　Wall’s book breathes energy and rigour into readings of Irish writers ranging from ‘homegrown’ to ‘immigrant and diasporic’, and reveals the emergence of increasingly hybrid creative practices ».

(Lorna Shaughnessy, Poet and　Director of　Crosswinds: Irish and Galician Poetry and Translation).

« Using Gloria Anzaldua’s work,　Wall　examines "borderlands" in Irish writing. These liminal spaces are not just territories, but culture, tradition, and time.　Wall　focuses on the borders that divide like class, gender, and sexuality but also language and the divide between the physical and spiritual worlds».

(Timothy J. White, Professor of Political Science, Xavier University).

In this study, Eamonn Wall brings the work of the American writer/scholar/activist Gloria Anzaldúa into dialogue with contemporary Irish and Irish American writing to reveal the many strategies that authors employ to describe, represent and navigate borders and borderlands. Borders, as Wall reveals, are not only geographical, but they are also psychological, ethical, gendered, abstract and obvious, and underlie much of life. Borderlands are liminal spaces in areas alongside borders that can be both liberating and frightening. Employing Anzaldúa’s language and methodology, Wall’s reveals how central borderlands are to the work of John McGahern, E.M. Reapy, Anna Burns, Úna Minh-Kavanagh, Terence Winch, Louis Owens, James Welsh, Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Philip Casey, and others.

Eamonn Wall is a professor of Global Studies and English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of From Oven Lane to Sun Prairie: In Search of Irish America (2019) and Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions (2011) as well as many essays, reviews, and volumes of poetry.