My mother came from an Irish family of 11 kids and, of course, had a sister who was a nun, so I spent time at a convent and with an aunt and uncle who lived in New York and took me to the theater.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My mother's family were full-on Irish Catholics - faith in an elaborate old fashioned, highly conservative and madly baroque style. I sort of fell out of the tribe over women's rights and social justice issues when I was just 13 years old.
I'm from an Irish Catholic family.
I had an Irish Catholic education. Horrible nuns, vindictive and cruel.
My parents were very religious. My mother came from Co Donegal to work in the shirt factory in Derry when she met my father.
My family was going back to England to visit my mother's grandmother, who was very ill. We went up to Liverpool and I met my great-aunt, who was just a force of nature. She was an elocution teacher and a huge enthusiast for theater and the classics. I took her amateur acting class, and she was really impressed with me.
My family, they're story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV while we ate - we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day.
My mother - the Irish side of the family - was very musical. My mother was a singer; there was music around the house all the time.
My parents were both first-generation Irish Catholics raised in Brooklyn.
My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead.
My mother's sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.