Irish Women Writers Speak Out: Voices From the Field (review)

Since the outrage over the Field Day Anthology'svirtual exclusion of women,feminists and other progressive writers have made a concerted effort to publish and publicize the works and words of Irish women. Irish Women Writers Speak Out is a direct result of this controversy. Although editors Caitriona Moloney and Helen Thompson castigate Field Day'sinitial omission of women, they also maintain that such marginalization is the fault of women writers and editors as well. This attribution of guilt, however, is questionable; Ailbhe Smith and Ann Owens Weekes's names are regularly cited in any critical discussion of Irish women's writing. Moreover, the continued failure of male critics, editors, publishers, and professors to mention or include Irish women writers in anthologies or reading lists suggests that the culture of Irish Studies is hardly woman-friendly.

This volume reflects Moloney and Thompson's efforts to address these oversights and, as they say, "articulate a common grievance" by providing a forum for Irish women writers literally to speak out. Through interviews conducted in person and by phone, fax, and e-mail, these women discuss the intersections of their writing, gender, and nationality. Irish women poets are not included; instead, the seventeen authors presented in this volume represent an electic mix of old and new, Irish and Irish-American writers of fiction. They range from Edna O'Brien and Jennifer Johnston to Emma Donoghue and Anne Enright, from Liz McManus and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne to Catherine Brady and Maura Stanton. Certainly the list is not exhaustive and the editors give no reason for omitting such obvious choices as Clare Boylan or Nuala O'Faolain.. Those included were chosen because of their common concerns as well as because the editors' pragmatic belief in the need to highlight certain contemporary Irish women writers. However, in this volume, Irishness is defined more by geography than birth. The first section includes authors who either were born or reside in Ireland; the second section is a mirror image, comprised of women who were not. This enables the editors to address another gap in Irish Studies, by including Irish-American women writers.

Although Moloney and Thompson submitted questions in advance and edited responses to ensure a degree of stylistic uniformity, these interviews offer a panoramic view of the culture and politics of contemporary Ireland. The editors' interest in postcolonial theory—as well as Ireland's status as former colony—leads them to raise this topic in every conversation, with widely differing responses. Some writers dismiss the issue, while others express convictions about how colonialism damages the country, its people, and its language; another view is that Ireland has always possessed a strong identity and that the Catholic church did much more harm to the country than England ever did.

The influence of the church is evident in the writers' discussions of abortion, divorce, women's rights, marriage, child abuse, domestic abuse, contraception, and of course, guilt and hypocrisy. Emma Donoghue notes that many members of the Irish lesbian community feel as comfortable conducting pagan rituals as they do attending midnight Mass. One of Donoghue's contemporaries, Miriam Dunne, attributes this to the decline of the Church's influence; however, Clair Ní Aonghusa suggests that this same decline has led to men's improved attitudes toward women. Nevertheless, the church's influence remains evident in the abortion debate; Catherine Dunne notes that when 5,000 women a year travel outside Ireland to obtain an abortion, it is obvious that Irish citizens would rather export the problem than deal with it.

Because the authors represent two distinct generations—second-wave feminists born 1945-55, and third-wave feminists born two decades later—their views on the subject of feminism and postfeminism vary, both in their politics and in the form and focus of their writing. The authors expound freely on...