Status Updates From Race, Politics, and Irish A...

A minefield of conceits and pretensions that attempts to pass near class-blind literary criticism off as social scientific theorizing. It pushes Ignatiev’s mythology of a unique social drive to whiteness amongst Irish Americans that seemingly does not exist within Ireland, a flimsy and self-interested belief with a shallow encounter with the modern Irish news.

So far very skeptical of yet another Irish reading of Irish America that believes in ethnic fade theory and attempts to lump Scotch Irish and Irish American into one ethnic category, even though the divisions between the two are larger than say Irish America and Italian America. I’m only a few chapters in, but I don’t think Burke has ever spoken to Irish Americans in real life.

I'm excited by how interesting this book is, how much I'm learning. Fascinating analyses of Eugene O'Neill, Fitzgerald, Henry James, Faulkner--not a quick read but a satisfying one