The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (23 page)

clusion enabling them to clarify their identities and move “toward change for

the better” (Fanning 2001, 343).

Irish Americans who stayed in the city did not always fare so well.

Although the early part of the decade saw Irish festivals and musicians, many

of them organized by Gertrude Byrne, by 1976 she and her husband had

relocated to the Catskills and taken their festivals with them (Moloney 2006,

435). As a result of similar moves, by 1970, the Irish population in New York

City had fallen from 4 percent overall in 1960 to only 2.8 percent (Almeida

2001, 45). These numbers remained fl at thanks to the 1965 Immigration

and Nationality Act, which reduced Irish immigration to approximately fi f-

teen hundred per year through the 1970s (Almeida 2006, 555). As racial

demographics changed, some boroughs emptied out, while the Irish popula-

tion in others dropped precipitously—Manhattan by 46 percent, Brooklyn

by 39 percent, and the Bronx by a quarter. Some parishes went from all-Irish

to Afro-Hispanic within a matter of months (Almeida 2001, 47). The ensu-

ing tensions and court-ordered public school integration contributed to race

riots in Chicago and Boston, some of which were led by Irish American poli-

ticians Louise Day Hicks and John Kerrigan (Meagher 2006, 638). Never-

theless, in the 1970s, Irish Catholics were more tolerant of integration than

Protestants or Catholics of other ethnicities (Greeley 1985, 167). All the

same, Richard Nixon, who had never championed civil rights, saw this mind-

set as key in his efforts to win over blue-collar workers, conservatives, and

Catholic “ethnic groups”—whom he cast as the silent majority—to throw

out the policies of the New Deal (Woods 2005, 321).

On the positive side, racial tensions raised ethnic awareness. Although

urban areas were no longer the hubs of Irish activity, Irish Americans main-

tained an interest in their heritage. The 1970s saw the rise of genealogical

organizations such as the Irish Ancestral Research Association, the Buffalo

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Irish Genealogical Society, and the Ballykilcline Society. Suddenly tradi-

tional Irish music was popular, as evidenced in the rise of the Clancy Broth-

ers and the Chieftans. In 1975, the fi rst Irish American music festival was

sponsored by the Philadelphia Ceili Group. Its popularity gave rise to similar

events such as the Snug Harbor Irish Traditional Music and Dance Festival

on Staten Island, the Providence Irish Festival in Rhode Island, and the Glen

Echo Irish Festival in Glen Echo Park, Maryland (Moloney 2006, 430–31).

In academia, Irish Studies programs, which emerged in 1966, began to pro-

liferate around the country (Meagher 2005, 167–68).

Some of Elizabeth Cullinan’s short stories in
Yellow Roses
(1971) cel-

ebrate this ethnicity (Fanning 2001, 372). In “Life After Death,” for exam-

ple, the female narrator refl ects, “There’s no such thing as the whole truth

with respect to the living, which is why history appeals to me. I like the

fi nality. . . . The reasons I love Mass are somewhat the same. During those

twenty or so minutes, I feel my own past to be not quite coherent but capable

of eventually proving to be that. And if my life, like every other, contains

elements of the outrageous, that ceremony of death and transfi guration is a

means of reckoning with time” (178). Likewise, “Commuting” celebrates

the liberation of ethnic doubleness. As the narrator travels from her job in

Manhattan back to her home base in the Bronx, she refl ects on the disparate

sights, comparing present and past, success and failure, to conclude: “Riding

that last half-mile, my head swam with relief, my heart sang—they do every

week, as this realization comes over me: I’ve reenacted, in spirit, the journey

that has given my life its substance and shape, color and brightness. I’ve

escaped!” (35). Such comparisons allow the narrator to examine her life and

its arc of success as she “escapes” from the poverty of the Bronx to success

in Manhattan. But rather than repudiate her ethnic roots, she celebrates the

dynamic role they have played in shaping the richness of her life (Fanning

2001, 375).

Joan Bagnel’s historical novel
Gone the Rainbow, Gone the Dove
(1973)

refl ects Irish Americans’ nationalistic interests with a tale of doomed Irish

lovers torn apart by the Troubles. Jamie Daley longs to fi ght for Irish sover-

eignty, only to fall in love and fi nd he must choose between love of country

and love for young Margaret Culhane. Recounted in fl ashbacks by his cousin

Jerry, the tale traces the boys’ fascination with Fianna Faille and their desire

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106 | T H E B A N S H E E S

to drive out the British. This novel puts a human face on the Troubles fol-

lowing Bloody Sunday and the growth of the IR A. Initially, Irish Americans

rallied around the cause, often sending money through NOR AID. Indeed,

in 1972, the theme of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade was “Get England

Out of Ireland”; and in 1978, Governor Hugh Carey was booed because of

his conciliatory speeches regarding Northern Ireland (Almeida 2006, 559).

Always attuned to popular trends, Hollywood churned out a number of

movies prominently featuring people of Irish descent: Joe Curran, the anti-

hero in
Joe
, represents the Irish American hawk thanks to his brutal attack on

antiwar hippies.
Serpico
,
Ragtime
,
True Confessions
,
The Godfather
, and
LA
Confi dential
include violent or corrupt Irish cops, not necessarily because

the Irish were perceived as such but because they represented the anti-estab-

lishment counterculture of the era (Dezell 2001, 165).

Of the Irish Americans remaining in the city, over a third were at least

seventy years of age (Almeida 2006, 555). Among the remaining two-thirds

there was sometimes a sense of defeat, for the 1970s was a time of economic

deterioration thanks to Lyndon’s Johnson’s attempts to pay for the Viet-

nam War without raising taxes, thus creating a $10 billion trade defi cit, 10

percent infl ation, the 1973 oil crisis, a lowered industrial production rate

of 1 percent a year, and massive unemployment. The sense of Irish unity

was failing as well. Among Catholic conservatives, the attempt by Rever-

end Phillip Berrigan to kidnap Henry Kissinger was not looked on favorably

(Woods 2005, 356–59). Within the city centers, Irish societies were dwin-

dling away, networking declined, even attendance at Gaelic Park eroded as

its former population moved away. While there was still a strong sense of

identity among the remaining Irish, it was based on family traditions rather

than social associations (Almeida 2001, 56–57).

The Personalist Revolution

American Catholic fi ction of the 1970s refl ects the uncertainty of the church

(Labrie 1997, 13). Attendance at Mass fell by 20 percent while the use of

birth control rose from 45 to 83 percent, interrelated factors stemming from

the
Humana Vitae
anti-birth control stance—a move many women viewed

as a means of keeping them “in their place” as nurturers and second-class cit-

izens (Weaver 1985, vii). This decade saw an increase in priests’ resignations

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from the clergy, 50 percent fewer seminarians entering the clergy, and apos-

tasy doubling from 7 to 14 percent (Weaver 1985, 2). More troubling were

women’s feelings of alienation. While the church’s patriarchal structure had

been acceptable in medieval times, its exclusive model of male leadership and

view of a masculine God was considered regressive, if not repressive, among

many women congregants (Seidler and Meyer 1989, 10).

In response, Catholic women began to initiate change and Irish Amer-

ican women began to speak out. Throughout the 1970s, the Leadership

Conference of Women Religious encouraged its members to work toward

women’s equality. Mary Lynch, a Catholic laywoman, convened a group of

like-minded women to discuss promoting women’s ordination during 1975,

International Women’s Year; this movement in turn resulted in the Women’s

Ordination Conference. At that conference Elizabeth Carroll accused par-

ticipating bishops of failing to enter into serious dialogue, while Margaret

Farley encouraged women to challenge the traditional hierarchy and “claim a

‘moral imperative’ for ordination” (Weaver 1985, 112–13). While such state-

ments claimed the headlines, they did not alter the church’s stance. In 1972

and 1973 the Grail reached out to women by sponsoring consciousness-rais-

ing workshops and co-hosting Women Exploring Theology conferences that

addressed the need for theological inclusivity. Between 1974 and 1979, the

Grail’s Seminary Quarter went even further, promoting an “emerging femi-

nist theology that begins, not with God, but with a theological refl ection of

women’s experience.” Likewise, in 1974 the Institute of Women Today was

founded to address women’s religious oppression; that same year, Catho-

lics for a Free Choice was formed to protect women’s reproductive rights

(Weaver 1985, 127–30).

The feminist theologian Mary Daly experienced this sense of alienation

more strongly than most. In
Beyond God the Father
(1973) she deconstructs

Christianity and urges women to leave the church. Begun in the giddy days

following Vatican II, Daly had already moved from “reformist” feminism to

characterizing herself as a “postchristian radical feminist.”
Beyond
not only

reevaluates her 1968 study,
The Church and the Second Sex
, but also outlines

the many ways she disagrees with her earlier stance as a result of anger and

disillusion. Like other 1970s feminists, she points out the prevalence of rape

and physical violence against women and children. Addressing the myth of

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108 | T H E B A N S H E E S

transcendence, which promises women heavenly rewards for their earthly

travails, she dismisses it as “dead circles of repetition going nowhere.” On

the subject of confl ict and vindication, she concludes that the latter is impos-

sible as a result of “perpetual oppression.” As for the mythic paradigm of

integrity and transformation, Daly argues that these planes can be attained

not through the church but through other myths with a “biophilic context,”

described in chapters subtitled “Sisterhood as Antichurch” and “Sisterhood

as Cosmic Covenant.” Such arguments underscored the need to move femi-

nism out of the “ruts, already violently embedded into women’s psyches,”

which had frozen them at the most basic stages of feminism and discour-

aged them from realizing the “full implications of patriarchal power” (Daly

1973, xiii–xv).

Although traditional church leaders dismissed the study, feminist theo-

logians such as Mary Jo Weaver and Rosemary Radford Ruether supported

it. A relative moderate compared to Daly, Ruether argued that “unless one

is willing to take the journey into that deeper anger, even to risk going a

bit mad, one really will never understand the depths of the evil of sexism”

inherent in the Catholic Church (1993, 187). With
Gyn/Ecology
(1978) Daly

moved beyond a critique of Catholicism to deconstruct the rationales, or

rationalizations, underlying long-accepted worldwide methods of torturing

women, ranging from Chinese foot binding, African genital mutilation, and

European witch burnings, to American gynecology. With this, she fi rmly

established her reputation as the angriest and most outrageous Irish Ameri-

can lapsed Catholic feminist of the era.

The literary works of the Irish American Ramona Stewart in some ways

exemplify this sense of alienation. During the 1970s, Stewart published fi ve

novels:
The Possession of Joel Delaney
(1970),
Apparition
(1973),
Age of Con-

sent
(1975),
Seasons of the Heart
(1978), and
The Sixth Sense
(1979). Cine-

philes no doubt recognize the fi rst and last of these, for both were made

into movies.
The Possession of Joel Delaney
centers around Santeria, a religion

in which only males can be priests, infl uenced in part by Roman Catholi-

cism and the “deviant worship of saints” (Pichardo 1998, n.p.). In this

novel, the possessed Delaney commits various murders until he is stopped

by the police. Its closing scene, in which a young naked boy (presumably