Madam, – Like a lot of people, I read The Irish Timeseach day. But I do so from the United States. I read with particular interest Ronan McGreevy's story quoting Irish cultural ambassador Gabriel Byrne's comment that generations of emigrants have been neglected (Home News, May 27th).
As a third-generation (on my mother’s side) and fourth-generation (on my father’s side) Irish American, I am a part of the group that Byrne referred to as having a fractured sense of identity. I love my country (America), but long for my ancestral homeland.
For years I have been gathering the materials needed to help my mother apply for Irish citizenship. Her grandmother left Ireland in 1890 as her Catholic family was forced to surrender their land in Co Tyrone. My father’s great-grandparents left Ireland during the Famine years.
And perhaps that is the point of my own longing and fractured sense of self: my ancestors didn’t leave Ireland by desire – they were forced out.
These last few years of trying to track down a birth or baptismal certificate for my great-grandmother have been incredibly frustrating.
I’ve hit brick wall after brick wall in what I assumed would be a fairly straight-forward business. It seems that many records of the time were burned. I started this process with the goal of reclaiming something that was wrongly taken from my family – our Irish identity. What I have found is that it wasn’t enough to take it; it seems as though someone tried to erase the fact that we had ever been there. Still, I continue to try.
Many Irish may laugh at the idea that someone who has never lived in the nation would claim a sense of Irishness. While I respect that Ireland is considerably more your country than mine, I can assure you that I share a sincere passion for her wellbeing.
I often joke that I love an overcast day because my body was built to live in the Irish climate. I know the difference between a feis and an oireachtas. I grew up on meat cooked until it was indistinguishable from shoe leather. And you can’t shake my family tree without a few alcoholics falling out of the branches. I am truly an Irish American.
Some day I hope I will have a chance to reclaim a small part of what was taken from my family not so long ago.
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