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Classic work of emigrant oral history relaunched for 25th anniversary
By Noreen Bowden | June 30, 2015
A classic work about emigration has been revised and reissued in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. “Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America”, by Dr Íde B. O’Carroll, will be launched by UCD Professor Margaret Kelleher on Wednesday, 15 July 2015 at 6 pm at in the Long Room Hub at Trinity College in Dublin. The event will be hosted by Dr Catherine Lawless of the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies at TCD; the Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Jimmy Deenihan, will make opening remarks.
The publishers’ website describes the book:
Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America is a unique collection of Irish women’s oral histories spanning three waves of twentieth-century emigration to America in the 1920s, 1950s, 1980s. The author provides a critical gender analysis of Irish society during the three migration waves to illustrate conditions for women prior to departure. The oral histories detail how each woman created an independent life for herself in America, often in the face of multiple challenges there. As active agents, often supporting one another to leave, these Irish women are role models because they inspire us to have the courage to act. The women’s voices also speak to and against the regulated silences surrounding both emigration and the reality of Irish women’s lives. Finally, they provide a rich multigenerational tapestry of experience into which women leaving Ireland today, often for places other than America, can weave their stories.•This book used an oral history approach to documenting Irish emigration history – an approach considered “ground-breaking” at the time• This revised twenty-fifth anniversary edition comes at a time of renewed global Irish migration•The Models’ project materials formed the basis of the first holding on Irish women at the Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, the premier repository on the History of Women in America – the O’Carroll Collection.
Author Dr Íde B. O’Carroll is an Irish-born social researcher and writer who divides her time between Amherst, MA and Lismore, Waterford; she is also a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House.
To RSVP for the launch, contact Cork University Press Tel: 00 353 (0)21 4902980 or email corkuniversitypress@ucc.ie. To order the book, visit the Cork University Press website.
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