Sightlines: Beyond the Beyond in Ireland

by Eileen Kane

It is the 1960s, and Ireland is hoping to join what will later become the European Union. The government has devised a plan to stem emigration and save the Irish language by supporting small factories in the Gaeltacht, traditional Irish-speaking villages in remote western areas. But is the plan working? With her signature humor and charm, Eileen Kane transports the reader to County Donegal with a detailed account of rural Irish life during this period of rapid change. This is a story about people living beyond the margins of maps, boundaries, language groups, and government departments – people bound by borders that have little or no correspondence to their own cultural, economic, and historical margins. Ultimately, it is a story about life on the edges, and the places and people who fall outside them.

Genres: Ireland

340 pages, Paperback

Published October 6, 2022

Reviews

[Natalia Hartford · Rating 5 out of 5]

A behind-the-scenes account of the author's anthropologial study in Donegal almost sixty years ago. I visit Donegal almost every year and it gave me a lot of background information to this area, but boy, am I glad we have moved on so many years since this study. I think the phrase "You were seen to be doing X" is the most frightening one to me. It gives the impression that nothing could be kept private. But it does give a very insightful look in to life in a poor and rural community in the sixties. The reasons for the continued mass emigration of the young, the strict roles women had (even written down in the constitution) etc. I will look at this area with renewed eyes when I will be on the bus again this coming summer.