The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy : What Every American Needs to Know by Josep

Description: The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy : What Every American Needs to Know by Josep. Condition is "Very Good". Shipped with USPS Media Mail Product Description An Irish-American writer returns to her homeland to pen several stories about contemporary Irish women, from Mad Minnie of Corofin to Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland. By the author of The Early Arrival of Dreams. Tour. From Publishers Weekly "There's only one sin in Ireland. Sex." So says Jean O'Brien, one of the progressive Irish women portrayed in this marvelously insightful, funny, disturbing, yet ultimately hopeful book. Mahoney ( The Early Arrival of Dreams ) looks at Irish women and their efforts to bring Ireland--in terms of personal choice and freedom--into the late 20th century. The author, who is an American of Irish descent, dissects the Irish--men and women alike--through their words and actions. Unremarkably, most of the book's focus is spent in pubs in Dublin and Corofin, County Clare. We listen to Francis, the wise publican at Dillon's pub: " . . . if the Dutch were in Ireland, they'd own half of Europe, and if the Irish were in Holland, they'd drown," and we encounter the extraordinary women of J. J. Smythe's lesbian bar in Dublin on their Saturday night adventures. Outside the pub, we meet with a diverse group of characters: Ruth Riddick, the activist most responsible for bringing information about birth control to Ireland; the conservative and saturnine members of the Legion of Mary; Eavan Boland, who tells us about the problems of being an Irish woman poet; and Mary Robinson, who with her election as president, has turned what in essence used to be a patronage job for aged political hacks into an office of respect, prestige and voice. The author portrays the sexual tension (much of it fueled by alcohol) that permeates the society. We also see the fruits of that sexual tension--a notably high illegitimacy rate and its social and political fallout. Mahoney, who has a wonderful ear for the expletive-filled Irish use of English, has the ability to chill the bones and make one feel loneliness as a theme of Irish life. Ultimately, this struggle for Irish sexual freedom may yet be fought in the streets of Dublin, like the political revolution of 1916. For as President Robinson says, "In a society where the rights and potential of women are constrained, no man can be truly free. He may have power, but he will not have freedom." First serial to Mirabella; BOMC alternate and QPB selection; author tour. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal In 1991, Mahoney ( The Early Arrival of Dreams , Fawcett, 1992) returned to Ireland to observe what she believed to be a change in the way Irish women functioned in their society, evinced in part by Mary Robinson's election as president and the challenges being mounted against the country's rigid divorce and abortion laws. Alternating between stories of her time spent in Dublin and in the tiny West Clare town of Corofin, Mahoney contrasts her encounters with urban women, who protest, teach, counsel, and strain to enact change, with the near-suffocation of rural women, trapped within traditional mores, the Church, and their own insecurity. Library collections both in women's studies and contemporary Ireland will benefit from Mahoney's insight and skillful writing. She is instructive and entertaining, with a wonderful ear for the language. The book might be better titled, but Mahoney's observations capture the tensions and complexity of Ireland today. - Susan Clifford, Hughes Aircraft Co. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews From Irish-American writer Mahoney (The Early Arrival of Dreams, 1990): a remarkably perceptive and engaging account of contemporary Irish women. Mahoney--who, with strong family ties to Ireland, spent a year in high school there--returned in 1991 to investigate what she believed to be the changing role of women in a country where divorce and abortion are illegal and women are defined strictly in relation to men. As a woman who runs a pregnancy counseling service in Dublin reminded her, ``The Irish Constitution refers to women only three times and in a restrictive and paternalistic fashion.'' But with a woman recently elected as the country's president--an election one Irish analyst described as ``psychically comparable to the collapse of the Berlin Wall''--and with the growing challenge to harsh antiabortion laws, as well as with Ireland's membership in the EEC (whose high court guarantees equal rights to all), Mahoney felt that change was at last coming. She alternated her investigation between Dublin and the village of Corofin, where she lived in a splendid but isolated old castle. In the village, she spent time in the pub run and owned by the MacNamara family--a family that reflected the old realities as well as the new: Francis, like many older men the author met, was a lonely bachelor; nephew Willi had an ex-wife in England, plus two illegitimate children in the village; and heavy-drinking, 30-ish Annie had been forced by her parents and the Church to give up her child, born out of wedlock. Back in Dublin, Mahoney met with lesbians; attended meetings of the Legion of Mary; talked to a feminist poet; and interviewed Irish President Mary Robinson, who noted that the old Irish mind-set of ``worrying uncertainty and self-deprecation'' is being replaced by ``a more positive sense of Irishness.'' A memorable portrait, by a natural storyteller and scholar, of a wonderfully eloquent and expressive people on the cusp of change. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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