Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South.

Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South. By Kieran Quinlan. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. Pp. [xiv], 289. $49.95, ISBN 0-8071-2983-6.)

As Kieran Quinlan's title indicates, the historical experience of the American South and that of the Emerald Isle are remarkably similar, a strange kinship indeed. Quinlan's mastery of the literature and history of both regions enables the reader to comprehend what he calls the "family and circumstantial resemblances" (p. 10). Quinlan provides new insight into the relationship between each region and its larger national context--between the Irish and the British, the South and the United States.

The author divides his work into two sections entitled "Kin" and "Kinship," each containing five chapters. In the kin section, Quinlan focuses on the significant Irish presence he finds throughout the history of the South. The author points out that in the past southerners thought of themselves as descendants of Anglo-Saxon England, an assumption that minimized the contributions of other ethnic groups, especially the Irish. Such is not the case today, as witnessed on any St. Patrick's Day in the South, when the contributions of the Irish are well recognized.

The author, a native of Ireland and resident of Alabama, believes that a recognition of what he calls the kin relationship with Ireland throughout the history of the South can give new meaning to the story of both regions. Irish pride and pleasure come across in Quinlan's telling of the kin relationship, which began in the seventeenth century with the planting of peoples from the Celtic regions of the British Isles in settlements in both places and grew throughout the nineteenth century because of famine, want of opportunity, and English oppression.

Quinlan's kinship section abounds with many examples of significant linkages or similarities between the two cultures, thereby enhancing our understanding of the kin relationship. It is in the kinship section that the author is at his best. Among his more convincing examples are the creation of a religiously based society in both regions that carded both the South, black and white, and Ireland, Protestant and Catholic, through trying times of slavery, attack, defeat, and famine. Neither the South after the Civil War nor Ireland after the famine could attract migration, which contributed to a siege mentality and a static memory. In time, a nationalist and defensive literature emerged that provided both regions with historical interpretations that defended the defeated South and the oppressed Ireland. Both places were locked into rural poverty and a distinct sense of place, and both experienced revisionist history following World War II. Both carried the special burden of their own histories, and both were plagued by mythology. In the case of the South, the mythology surrounded slavery and Reconstruction. In the case of Ireland, mythology developed around the famine and the heroes of her physical force republican traditions.

The two regions shared a kinship in their respective civil rights movements of the 1960s and in the racist activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the Orange Order; and, in both areas, Protestants possessed an abiding fear of popery. They also shared kinship in economic success, which brought about a decline in negative stereotyping. Increased prosperity among the Irish in both regions made a mockery of the stereotype that depicted them as lazy, drunken, and ape-like, and such images had all but disappeared by the end of the twentieth century.

The author on occasion is prone to guesswork and making unsubstantiated statements. For example, when discussing the Reverend John Bannon's visit with Pope Pius IX, he states that Bannon was quite "possibly carrying a personal letter from [Jefferson] Davis" (p. 86). On page 97, Quinlan states that "dispirited Irish Confederate troops deserted in unusually large numbers." On page 120, he states, "The response in the South, even today," to the movie Gone with the Wind "bears elements of religious fervor." It is also questionable to say that Charles Beard had "an important influence on the reorientation of Irish historical writings in the late 1930s" (p. 130). Finally, the author speaks of "punitive tariffs on [southern] exports to other parts of the country" (p. 140).

Some readers might accuse Quinlan of pounding two very square regions into one round hole. Such is not the case. This book is a valuable addition to our knowledge of the Irish in the South and the many connections between the two regions. Many of us who have come to love both regions will strongly relate to the kinships noted and cleverly explained by Quinlan in his book.

JOSEPH MICHAEL MCFADDEN

University of Saint Thomas