Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK

Beth O’Leary Anish is a Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island, USA. She successfully defended her dissertation, Writing Irish America: Communal Memory and the Narrative of Nation in Diaspora, at the University of Rhode Island.  She has been published in the New Hibernia Review, and is an active member of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Her research interests are in American immigrant literature, contemporary Irish literature, and Irish American fiction and memoir.

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Memory, History, and the Shaping of the Irish American Present.- Chapter 2 On why this book should and should not begin with Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.- Chapter 3 Edward McSorley and Irish America's Coming of Age.- Chapter 4 A Community Deformed in Mary Doyle Curran's The Parish and the Hill.- Chapter 5 “Good Catholic Radicals”: Harry Sylvester's Moon Gaffney and Irish American Catholicism at Mid-Century.- Chapter 6 How the Other Half Lives: Ellin Berlin’s Lace Curtain.- Chapter 7 John Steinbeck’s Irish Grandfather: Samuel Hamilton, East of Eden, and Post World War II Irish American Fiction.- Chapter 8 The Last Hurrah for a Way of Life: The Private Side of Edwin O’Connor’s Famous Novel.- Conclusion - Communities in Jeopardy.