A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in IrelandStrangely positioned between Europe and the postcolonial world, Ireland occupies a fluid and contradictory space, not least in the memory or imagination of its many emigrants. In this sensitive exploration of the culture of others, Rebecca Solnit returns to Ireland, armed with a newly-acquired Irish passport - courtesy of otherwise forgotten maternal ancestors. Her journey is not to find stable identity in ancestral roots but to confront notions of stability, identity, ethnicity and nationalism in one of their great mythic sources. A Book of Migrations is a postcolonial revision of conventional travel literature. In her passage through Ireland, Rebecca Solnit portrays in microcosm a history made of great human tides of invasion, colonization, emigration, nomadism and tourism. Travel itself produces its own versions of memory and identity, and travel's transformation into the information age's pre-eminent industry - tourism - comes under close scrutiny. It is no accident that her journey culminates in an encounter with the Travellers, the indigenous nomads of contemporary Ireland. |
Contents
The Cave | 1 |
The Book of Invasions | 8 |
Noahs Alphabet | 20 |
The Butterfly Collector | 28 |
The Beggars Rounds | 44 |
Anchor in the Road | 58 |
Wandering Rocks | 71 |
Articles of Faith | 79 |
The Circulation of the Blood | 108 |
Rock Collecting | 119 |
The War between the Birds and Trees | 127 |
Wild Goose Chase | 133 |
Grace | 143 |
Travellers | 151 |
The Green Room | 166 |
Notes | 174 |
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American animals Aran Islands Bantry Bantry Bay became become began birds blood blue body butterflies California Catholic Celtic Celts century church Cliffs of Moher colonial Congo Cork culture diaries dream Dublin Easter Rising Eliot emigration England English ethnic Europe European exile Famine farm forest Galway Grace O'Malley green Gypsies human identity imagination indigenous invasion Ireland Irish Travellers island J. M. Synge Jews journey Joyce Kathleen Killarney land landscape Liffey Lisdoonvarna lived London looked memory metaphor mountain native Native Americans never nomads origin Paddy past pastoral perhaps poem poetry poets political population Portumna potato river road rock Roger Casement Seamus Heaney seemed Spenser St Patrick's stone stories Street Sweeney Swift T. S. Eliot talk things thought told tourist town tradition trees Ulysses walking walls wandering wild woman York young