Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK

Beth O'Leary Anish is a Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island, USA, who successfully defended her dissertation, Writing Irish America: Communal Memory and the Narrative of Nation in Diaspora, at the University of Rhode Island.  Her essay "Arrived at Last: The Young Women of Elizabeth Cullinan's Fiction" appears in the Spring 2018 New Hibernia Review.  Her research interests are in American immigrant literature, contemporary Irish literature, and Irish American fiction and memoir. Beth is a frequent presenter at regional and international meetings of the American Conference for Irish Studies, an organization for which she is on the board of the New England region.  She was a delegate to the first Global Irish Diaspora Congress at University College, Dublin, Ireland, and has also presented for MELUS, the British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, and the Popular Culture Association of America.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Memory, History, and the Shaping of the Irish American Present.- Chapter 2 On why this book should and should not begin with Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.- Chapter 3 Edward McSorley and Irish America's Coming of Age.- Chapter 4 A Community Deformed in Mary Doyle Curran's The Parish and the Hill.- Chapter 5 "Good Catholic Radicals": Harry Sylvester's Moon Gaffney and Irish American Catholicism at Mid-Century.- Chapter 6 How the Other Half Lives: Ellin Berlin's Lace Curtain.- Chapter 7 John Steinbeck's Irish Grandfather: Samuel Hamilton, East of Eden, and Post World War II Irish American Fiction.- Chapter 8 The Last Hurrah for a Way of Life: The Private Side of Edwin O'Connor's Famous Novel.- Conclusion - Communities in Jeopardy.