A Book of Migrations
A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland Rebecca Solnit,
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 1859848850
DDC: 941.5
Edition: Hardcover; 1997-06
Summary:
A beautifully written exploration of identity and memory in a journey
through Ireland. Strangely positioned between Europe and the
postcolonial world, Ireland occupies a fluid and contradictory space,
not least in the memory or imagination of its many emigrants. In this
sensitive exploration of the culture of others, Rebecca Solnit
returns to Ireland, armed with a newly acquired Irish passport --
courtesy of otherwise forgotten maternal ancestors. Her journey is
not to find a stable identity in ancestral roots but to confront
notions of stability, identity, ethnicity and nationalism in one of
their great mythic sources. A Book of Migrations is a postcolonial
revision of conventional travel literature. In her passage through
Ireland, Rebecca Solnit portrays in microcosm a history made of great
human tides of invasion, colonization, emigration, nomadism and
tourism. Travel itself produces its own versions of memory and
identity, and travel's transformation into the information age's
pre-eminent industry -- tourism -- comes under close scrutiny. It is
no accident that her journey culminates in an encounter with the
Travellers, the indigenous nomads of contemporary Ireland. Enriched
by cross-cultural comparisons with the history of the American West,
A Book of Migrations carves a new route through Ireland's history,
literature and landscape. Rich with historical reflections --
including fine essays on Roger Casement and Jonathan Swift, the
Dublin Natural History Museum and the disappearance of Ireland's
forests -- the book combines the virtues of the finest travel writing
with a critical acuity.
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