As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Being Irish-American myself, Irish-American material is readily at hand to me.
My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.
I have encountered on this long road an enthusiasm for an Irishness which will be built on recognising again those sources from which spring the best of our reason and curiosity.
My dad is Irish. I spent my childhood going back and forth between Ireland and America.
Ireland is a series of stories that have been told to us, starting with the Irish Celtic national revival. I never believed in 'Old Ireland.' It has been made all of kitsch by the diaspora, looking back and deciding what Ireland is. Yes, it is green. Yes, it is friendly. I can't think of anything else for definite.
I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this.
The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.
The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.
I'm Irish and always will be, but America has taught me so much. Maybe it's here in the U.S. that we find a healing, for in the broader melting pot we get to look at some of these self-destructive attributes that we bring to bear upon our own quarrels and begin to solve them in ways other than just splitting apart.
Being Irish is very much a part of who I am. I take it everywhere with me.
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