1st Edition
Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland and Contemporary Women’s Writing Feminist Interventions and Imaginings
Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland and Contemporary Women’s Writing: Feminist Interventions and Imaginings analyzes and explores women’s writing of the post-Tiger period and reflects on the social, cultural, and economic conditions of this writing’s production.
The Post-Celtic Tiger period (2008–) in Ireland marks an important moment in the history of women’s writing. It is a time of increased visibility and publication, dynamic feminist activism, and collective projects, as well as a significant garnering of public recognition to a degree that has never been seen before. The collection is framed by interviews with Claire Kilroy and Melatu Uche Okorie—two leading figures in the field—and closes with Okorie’s landmark short story on Direct Provision, “This Hostel Life.” The book features the work of leading scholars in the field of contemporary literature, with essays on Anu Productions, Emma Donoghue, Grace Dyas, Anne Enright, Rita Ann Higgins, Marian Keyes, Claire Kilroy, Eimear McBride, Rosaleen McDonagh, Belinda McKeon, Melatu Uche Okorie, Louise O’Neill, and Waking The Feminists. Reflecting on all the successes and achievements of women’s writing in the contemporary period, this book also considers marginalization and exclusions in the field, especially considering the politics of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and ability.
The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory.
1. A Continuum of Women’s Writing: Reflections on the Post-Celtic Tiger Era
Claire Bracken and Tara Harney-Mahajan
2. Claire Kilroy: An Overview and an Interview (with a 2020 Addendum)
Mary Burke
3. "no difference between the different kinds of yesterday:" The Neoliberal Present in The Green Road, The Devil I Know, and The Lives of Women
Mary McGlynn
4. Transformative Tales for Recessionary Times: Emma Donoghue’s Room and Marian Keyes’ The Brightest Star in the Sky
Margaret O’Neill
5. Queer Possession and the Celtic Tiger: Affect and Economics in Belinda McKeon’s Tender
Patrick Mullen
6. Gina and the Kryptonite: Mortgage Shagging in Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz
Rachael Sealy Lynch
7. Waking the Feminists: Re-imagining the Space of the National Theatre in the Era of the Celtic Phoenix
Emer O'Toole
8. A Girl is A Half-formed Thing?: Girlhood, Trauma, and Resistance in Post-Tiger Irish Literature
Susan Cahill
9. Melatu Uche Okorie: An Introduction to her Work and a Conversation with the Author (with Preface: 2020 Update)
Sara Martín-Ruiz
10. This Hostel Life
Melatu Uche Okorie
Biography
Claire Bracken is Associate Professor in the English Department at Union College, New York, USA, where she teaches courses on Irish literature and film. She has published articles on Irish women’s writing, feminist criticism, and Irish cultural studies. She is co-editor of Anne Enright (Irish Academic Press, 2011) and Viewpoints: Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Visual Texts (Cork University Press, 2013). Her book, Irish Feminist Futures (2016), was published by Routledge as part of the Transformation series.
Tara Harney-Mahajan is Assistant Professor of English at Caldwell University, New Jersey, USA, where she teaches courses on Irish literature and Global Anglophone literature. Her research specializes in contemporary Irish and South Asian literature, and her scholarship has been published in journals such as Women’s Studies and New Hibernia Review. In the Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture series, she has a chapter forthcoming on representations of Ireland’s architecture of containment in recent films. She is also co-editor of the literary studies journal LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory.
