On Monday March 12, authors Mary Ann Ryan and Saint Xavier University professor Dr. Kathleen McInerney spoke at Bookie’s, the local neighborhood bookstore, about their book Too Smart to Be Sentimental.
Ryan and McInerney are co-editor of and contributors to Too Smart to Be Sentimental, an anthology of female Irish American writers.
Before Ryan and McInerney’s book, there was little out there about Irish American women writers; the book is meant to highlight that gendered gap that exists in literary works.
McInerney explained that the idea for the book came up as she and Ryan, though geographically separated, went through a period of time in school where they recognized the lack of minority writing.
“When I was studying in undergrad and in high school,†McInerney said, “the canon at the time did not include Black authors or women authors or Latinas, or Native Americans. I could take Soviet history but I couldn’t take African American history, and at that time it was the cold war so there was lots of fear.â€
“Mary Ann and I…were both interested in and had worked with African American writers and Latina and Native American writers,†McInerney continued. “I even got to a place in my PhD. at the University of Iowa where I was working with a famous African American woman scholar of literature and she was calling Skip Gates at Harvard about me and saying,“We have the next shiny new star here she needs to be in the next whatever we publish!’â€
However, McInerney also explained that during her PhD. program, she had an epiphany about the work she was trying to complete.
“I was at a graduates symposium and one of my male colleagues was speaking,†McInerney said, “He was describing his stance on African American women writers as one of listening. And it finally occurred to me: I need to get out the way.â€
“As much as I was interested in immigration and diaspora literature, I needed to back away and let African American women scholars and Native American women scholars and Latina writers speak.â€
“There are only so many places at the table and I didn’t want to take anyone’s place, even if Skip Gates thought it was cool. So that’s when I started looking at Irish American writing – which was part of the diaspora I had looked at before – and I got more interested in specific Irish American women writers and then we had a table conversation.â€
Two of these Irish American women writers included Tess Gallagher and Elizabeth Cullinan.
Both authors have written poetry, essays, and short stories. Ryan drove up to the Olympic Peninsula, where she interviewed Gallagher for four hours, an event she called “life changing.†McInerney traveled to New York to interview Cullinan.
“I grew up loving books,†Ryan explained. “But we had to perform the double hermeneutic. All the narrators were male. So I had to deny my femaleness to relate to the male.â€
“But on my own through all the years of reading novels and short stories,†Ryan continued, “Tess Gallagher was the one I liked.â€
Similarly, McInerney had a personal attachment to Cullinan’s works.
“To me,†McInerney said, “Cullinan was an fascinating writer and her books were out of print. So, my effort was to revive her, to save her works, get her name to be more common.â€
The actual idea for the book arose at a conference the McInerney and Ryan attended.
“We were mad about the field day anthology,†McInerney remembered. “It was about Irish literature, but it was all men. And we were at dinner and we said,â€Well you know, we should write a book!†And we looked around at the intellectual capacity at the table and we decided to write on Irish American women writers.â€
It took several rejections before University of Notre Dame Press picked the book up. McInerney calls the fight to get the book published a “grassroots effort,†one that she and Ryan are extremely grateful they fought.
For more information on Too Smart to Be Sentimental, visit http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P01199.
Cheyanne Daniels
News Editor
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