Product Description

Tom Hayden explores the psychic, emotional and political consequences of the erasure of a rebellious Irish heritage by generations seeking the respectability of American assimilation. This, he argues, has yielded to an Irish American literature of sentimentality typified by the work of Frank McCourt and to high rates of schizophrenia, depression, and alcoholism within the community. By re-inhabiting their history, today's Irish-Americans could recognize their links to others now experiencing the prejudice once directed at their forefathers and thereby offer an independent Irishness to global movements for peace and justice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #210282 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-25
• Released on: 2001-10-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Hayden, a leading student activist in the 1960s and now a California state senator, writes about finding his Irish roots in a book that will have many Irish-Americans up in arms with its take-no-prisoners, leftist spin on Irish history. But he makes some very good cultural points. He speaks, for instance, of the "colonization of the mind" and how this affected the Irish under British rule and as immigrants in America, which largely started with the potato famine of the 1840s. Hayden's humor is mordant and dry as he takes on such "experts" on the Irish as former senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (who thought the Irish lacked intellectual curiosity), and former governor Pete Wilson of California, who boasted of his Irishness while running anti-immigrant ads. He speaks of growing up in an Irish-Catholic family which could have come out of a Eugene O'Neill drama; his admiration for John and Robert Kennedy, particularly the thoughtful, saturnine Bobby who emerged after the death of JFK. Hayden then goes on to report on everything Irish in America, from the Molly Maguires and the "forgotten" San Patricios, to the politics of the wild Fenian revolutionary, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. He then gives his spin on the struggle in Northern Ireland and how it was sabotaged for years by such Irish-Catholic luminaries as Tip O'Neill, Ted Kennedy and former House Speaker Tom Foley. Some of his points will outrage the Irish establishment in this country, but Hayden makes a strong case for his leftist interpretation of Irish and Irish-America history..

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
During the 1960s, Hayden was in the forefront of social justice activism, but the conflict in his ancestral homeland was not part of his agenda. Hayden's family had long ago suppressed its Irish identity to merge into Anglo-American society. That changed in 1968 when civil rights marches in Northern Ireland awakened in the young radical an awareness of his ethnic identity, and later friendships with Northern Irish activists Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness revealed the connection of Old World struggles with those in the New. This work is both a memoir and an examination of Irish and Irish American history. Unfortunately, much of Hayden's analysis is overly simplistic, accepting as self-evident claims the text does not otherwise support. For example, several times he asserts without qualification that the Irish Famine was "the greatest upheaval of nineteenth century Europe" conveniently ignoring such disasters as the Napoleonic Wars or the Revolution of 1848. As a personal memoir, however, this is a revealing look at Hayden's youth and his journey of self-discovery. Recommended for larger public libraries. Christopher Brennan, SUNY at Brockport
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Tom Hayden has been a leader of anti-war, civil rights, and environmental movements in America since the 1960s. A California State Senator for eighteen years, he was part of the US Commerce Department delegation to Northern Ireland in 1995, and has authored legislation to include the Famine in California's school curriculum. He is the author and editor of many books including Reunion: A Memoir and Irish Hunger.

Customer Reviews

The Politics of Northern Ireland Made Understandable
I read Hayden's book as I travelled through the northwest of Ireland, in the Republic and in Northern Ireland, and found great insight within. Hayden takes a tremendously complex political and social quagmire and illuminates without oversimplifying. The people who hate this book are likely people who simply dislike everything about the social movements of the 1960s in which Hayden was so deeply immersed. But for those who still believe in fighting for what is right, and care about Ireland, Irish On The Inside will be a refreshing read that will have an impact.

Great work of nonfiction
I just finished reading Dan Sheehan's novel Irish American Hero. I wanted to learn more about Northern Ireland and picked up a copy of Irish On the Inside. It is a great book and I'd suggest that people pair up the two books to get a real feel for what has been going on in Northern Ireland!

Cultural String theory.
I come from the same people as the author and see things quite diferently.The book impressed me as a very windy and preachy screed of self-adulation and pseudointellectual posturing.Filled with nonsequitors,gushing kudoes to his liberal friends and the Kennedys,and all based on this laboriously contrived theory that
Irish-Americans possess cultural and personality traits that have their origin with the Potato Famine.There are a few.The dont tread on me attitude is one but then most people who have been oppressed(and that is most people)have the same trait.I admit to a certain bias.While Mr. Hayden was sleeping with Jane Fonda and getting arrested in Chicago in the 60s becoming somewhat of a political celebrity,I was starting a medical career on the southside of that city while raising 5 very young children.Nice try Tom but Robert Emmet your not.