Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family's Past

by Richard White

In an example of oral history, a professor of history records the memories of his mother, who immigrated to Chicago from Ahanagran, in Ireland, at sixteen and later married his father, a Jewish army officer, during World War II.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Biography Memoir, Ireland, Memoir, Grad School

303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Richard White is the author of many acclaimed histories, including the groundbreaking study of the transcontinentals, Railroaded, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and lives near Palo Alto, California.

Reviews

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family’s Past is a lovely book about Richard White’s mother’s memories and how over several generations they impacted not only her life, but were caught up and intricately connected in the flow of history. Sara Walsh was born in the land of storytellers in 1919 in Ahanagran in the west of Ireland in County Kerry close to the banks of the River Shannon. But in Sara’s stories the past is not a single frame. Richard White describes it as different pasts hanging like two pictures on a wall. One frame is the everyday occurrences that are repeated endlessly but this does not include the extraordinary. To Sara and those in Kerry, such events were regarded as visitations. The Time of Troubles is the frame for one set of extraordinary events where the people of Kerry combine and recombine these images of the past.

Sara Walsh has made her life out the stories that she told her five children, the stories of her early years in Ireland, her migration to the United States when she was just sixteen years old, her life in Chicago as she struggled to become an American, and her marriage during World War II to Harry White, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and a graduate of Harvard, and an officer in the United States Army. As an historical perspective, the author presents the following:

“In Sara’s memories America and Ireland exist as simple contrasts. American abundance, Irish poverty; American progress, Irish backwardness. But she wavered between them because there was a final pairing; American sadness, Irish happiness. ‘Ireland was poor, but we were happy there,’ she says. ‘I found that people in America were not happy. It was not the land of milk and honey that I was led to believe it was, at least life on the Southwest Side of Chicago was different.’”

Richard White wrote this book in collaboration with his mother Sara, that while neither a memoir nor history, it becomes something much larger and more vibrant with the research and personal recollections over the years. Together they bring us a more balanced tale and passionate story of Sara Walsh White and her family. It is a remarkable achievement between Sara White’s memory and Richard White’s history to bring us a very passionate story. And finally, this is another beautiful autographed book that has been sitting in my library since 1998. And as one who has a shelf dedicated to favorite book covers, this little book is proudly on it. The jacket art is Lakeside Cottages by Paul Henry, courtesy of the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland.

[Kaleigh Shutran · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories, by Richard White was published in Seattle at the University of Washington Press copywrited in 1998. The author is a much respected historian who’s book stirred up much controversy. He has published many respected books, however this particular book isn't quite as popular as is others. Richard White being top notch American historian graduated with a Ph.D. from Washing University, his colleagues there helped him in the writing of this book. Richard White does a phenomenal job of illustrating his role of this book and that is to be the historian. He has a hard time digging deeper/
This story is a retelling life story of Richard Whites mother. He writes the book working directly alongside his mother. He uses his own memories as well as his mothers to re-create her story. Sara, his mother, is Irish immigrant who came to America when she was 16 and lived in Chicago. She talks about her childhood in Ireland, where she grew up on a farm and her father was not present. These memories are vague to her and many of them are memories of the stories she was told. This paints a bigger picture through memory and history.
I feel White does a wonderful job of stating his biases throughout the story. Countless times throughout the book he makes statements such as, “my historians guess, when I try to be the historian, I have to look at this story through the facts and not my mother’s memories.” You can clearly tell that he is a historian first. Even though his mom clearly tries to change some of her memories he is always there to bring into question the facts. Although trying to bring the truth and preserve personal memories can be hard he connects geography and research to truly get to the truth of his mother’s life and the truth of her memories.
Although White does a good job of stating his biases he still had a hard time expressing the importance of his mother’s memories. The bigger picture needed to be painted more clearly. The possibility of not prying too deep may have been the cause to why Whites doesn't go into those more gritty details of the tragedies in his mother’s life. For example White recognizes a pattern in his mother story telling. She is implicit criticisms. Yet, throughout the story never ceases to correct these memories.
This book truly highlights the historian’s role in interpreting memories. Memories are history and history is memories. History will die with a person, geography, or document if the memories are not told. Memory try can seek to hid truths, where history will always uncover those. Memory is selective as this book will clearly demonstrate. However history can be selective too depending on who the historian uncovering the story is.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Richard White writes a book about his mother, but he calls into question how we remember our own histories. This book is about his mother, but it is also about what history itself remembers and how our perspectives are forced into the narrative. It was a fascinating and quick read!

[Ellen Stroud · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books about the project of writing history.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard White’s Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories is about the intersection of memory and history and how each has an important part to play in studying the past. History is the stuff of facts and figures, documents and archives. Memory is the stuff of stories, experience, and emotion. Both have a contribution to make in discovering the “truth” about the past. Richard White is telling his mother Sara Walsh’s stories of the past, and using those stories to illustrate what he sees as the productive and complementary relationship between history and memory. Thomas Slaughter, in his review of the book, says “it is about fact, fiction, and how White decides what is true.”

Stories and what White calls “history” – the past as revealed by the written record – are both forms of evidence. Slaughter summarizes how stories complement historical fact:
The stories are true to the memories, to the emotions, to the order that the teller makes of her life. They are not White’s “history,” which has a different chronology, trajectory, and, sometimes, causality. They are not the same stories told by newspapers, census records, and other witnesses, living and dead. Sometimes Sara’s stories are truer than history, with its silent individuals, lost feelings, and extraneous details. Some of the stories show where history goes wrong.
The truth of stories versus the truth of history that White is struggling with lies in his effort to describe the Chicago neighborhood where Sara lived when she first arrived in the United States. White writes “to listen to my mother, South Mozart Street drifted in a sea of Irish. Everyone, she says, was Irish.” Yet when White did research into the demographics of that area of Chicago, he discovered “[t]here were more Germans than Irish and nearly as many Lithuanians as Irish in Chicago Lawn.” White solves this conundrum by pointing out that “My mother knows what she experienced. She deals in lived places, in remembered places, not in the more complete yet anonymous space of the census takers. … They were not the people that Sara talked to, cared about, or met in private places.” Sara’s stories may have been wrong about the ethnic makeup of the people in her neighborhood, but they tell the truth in that everyone she knew was Irish.

Yet history also gets the nature of Sara’s neighborhood wrong. Chicago Lawn is a name that sociologists from the University of Chicago made up for “community area number 66.” It is not a name that Sara or any of the people who lived there at the time used. White goes further into the construct that is Chicago Lawn:
Chicago Lawn, so fully and carefully enumerated in the Chicago fact books, appears to be real, but it is a creation of academics and bureaucrats. They measured an essentially arbitrary area, and in bequeathing historians their measurements and statistics they created the illusion of an actual place. If historians are not careful, such places that never existed can take on historical lives of their own. I can go back and get very precise measurements of ethnicity, housing, race, and income for Chicago Lawn, even though, as far as the lived experiences of its residents went, there was no Chicago Lawn.

“Truth,” in this case, can only be discovered at the intersection of memory and history.
Truth, according to White, is also dependent on how memory and history make use of time and place. Hans Krabbendam, in his review of White’s book, states:
During his dialogue with his mother, White discovered how history and story use the function of time and place differently. Stories have power, they command authority, and places are not only localities, but entities that speak. Time in stories functions differently from the strict chronology that historians employ. The timelessness of everyday life and the prolonged political struggle allows events to blur in time.

White illustrates the blurring of historical events in time and place when he writes about the death of Ballylangford’s Eddie Carmody and how it blends with the death of three friars from a nearby abbey in the 16th century:
The monks died in 1580. Eddie Carmody died in 1920. To a historian these seem separate deaths, centuries apart and for different reasons. But to see all of these deaths within the frame of the Troubles is to understand the dying differently. There are not multiple deaths in the Troubles, there is but one death endlessly repeated. … In Sara’s and Ballylangford’s memory, there is only one death at the hands of the English – be they Cromwell’s men or the Black and Tans. It is the same death repeated over and over again. That death is the mark of the Troubles.

White also points out that history and memory value time in different ways. History values the past AS the past. Memory values the past only in terms of the present:
History loves chronology. History sorts and orders events by date. Historians assume relations between things that happen during the same period in the same place. … [County] Kerry wants a past that meet the demands of the present; it wants present events and past events to connect and even to merge.

History privileges the flat statement: In 1929, Jack Walsh returned to Ballylongford; Sara Walsh travelled on the Laconia which docked in Boston on November 17, 1936. Memory tells us what history cannot: Jack Walsh intended to stay in Ireland, but could not; Sara Walsh did not want to emigrate to the United States. History tells us about a fact in the past: “Sara Walsh took a job at the Chicago Municipal airport.” But “[o]pen up that flat statement and a world of changes spins out.” That fact stands at the beginning of a series of changes in Sara’s life that were the direct result of her taking that job. Again, we discover that it is the combination of history and memory that provides us with a rich understanding of the past.

In the end, as White points out throughout the book, history is really just an educated guess. Historians have to take into account the historical facts of record, and combine them and reconcile them with memory. Both are sources of evidence about the past. It’s hard to recover the sense people made of their lives from documents and records. Stories people tell about themselves - their memories - may not be “historically accurate” in terms of time and place. But they are invaluable in giving the past emotion, meaning, and insight into what happened in the past. As Slaughter points out: “White knows the simple truth that history and census records are not the same thing. Statistics teach us less than memory about the way people live. … The historian must use imagination to fill in the gaps, to make the story true to any single life. This is the harder job and the more important one.” Immersing yourself in as much evidence, whether it be history or memory, about your subject is the way to the most educated guess about the “truth” of the past.

[Christopher Leekeenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard White explores the difference between history and memory while telling the story of his mother's journey from Ireland to America. He's a historian and more caught up with the dialectic regarding historical veracity than a casual reader might be, or than I was. But I enjoyed his musings, in particular his observation of immigrants', specifically the Irish, long view of history, spanning generations and centuries, as opposed to the much shorter view I, as a third or fourth generation Irishman, have, knowing very little of my grandparents' worlds, much less my great-grandparents' or great-great-grandparents' worlds. White does not discuss White Privilege, but I wonder if non-whites, and even whites who aren't the Protestant elite, regard their history and heritage more closely and dearly because they are not readily accepted in America's power structure. That's a digression. Sorry. I loved Mr. White's history of the Irish coming to America, intertwined with his mother's personal experience.

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing "anti-memoir" memoir-history in conversation as White refers to his book. I read this as a university library book but am now buying a copy to add to my personal library as I want to re-read and refer to it in the future. Here is but one favorite passages:
"Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable.The past should not be a familiar echo of the present, for if it is familiar why revisit it? The past should be so strange that you wonder how you and the people you know and love could come from such a time. When you have traced that trajectory, you have learned something." p. 13

[MJ Brodie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating account of a life lived between Ireland and America and written by an eminent historian who sorts through memory, story and historical record with an expert eye. I particularly enjoyed the parts of the book where White sifts through historical records to check the remembered stories he grew up hearing. This book shows how so much of what we know about our families, even our own parents, is based on the stories they tell from their own point of view and how that may not always represent a true record. I loved reading this book and would love to write a similar history for my own parents/family some day.

[Lizzy Ritz · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1986 I was a Journeywoman Therapist in the SW suburbs of Chicago characterized by the white flight of mostly 1st and 2’d generation Irish immigrants. This amazing book taught me “my people” and transformed my ability to understand the confusing and chaotic patterns and traditions of immigrant life. I was the 4th generation away from my family’s immigration and was clueless.
Much of the book is specific to the locale of Ahanagran and Chicago which worked well for me. Great reader for white people trying to understand our racism and hard earned fears and biases.

[Madelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

"My mother, Sara, like all of us, has constructed versions of the past. She has made memories where I seek history. It would be mean-spirited, trivial, and despicable willfully to destroy the memories of one you love. (...) I am interested in what my mother's memories are, not what they are not. They are creations; they are a making sense; they are a conscious rewriting in the light of the person she has become and continues to become."

[Haley LeFaivre · Rating 3 out of 5]

In an example of cross-referencing memory versus history, Richard White’s Remembering Ahanagran offers an anti-memoir of his mother’s experience in immigrating to the United States. The book is broken down into a foreword, introduction, four parts with thirty-six chapters, and an epilogue. Published by University of Washington Press from Seattle and London in 1998, the book has been peer-reviewed intensively. Richard White is a well-known historian at the University of Washington who had the aid of his colleagues, Robin Stacey and George Behlmer in understanding the Irish history that White was dealing with from the memories of his mother. A large portion of this book specifically deals with the memories of Sara and his family members. With reviewing this book, there were two strengths of White’s comparison with History and memory, then his admittance to bias. The two weaknesses of White’s book would include his overly biased statements in regarding his father’s memory and the fact that there are no footnotes or works cited present in the book, thus discrediting his actual use of history.

The length of the book has a total of 303 pages, broken down into four overall parts. The book delves into the analysis of the author’s family narrative regarding his mother moving to the United States in the early 1900s. The breakdown of the book will be divided by its four parts. Part 1 involves chapters one through fifteen and describes Sara Walsh’s childhood in Ireland until she boarded the ship to America. Part 2 involves chapters sixteen through twenty explaining Sara’s assimilation in America and found her home with her estranged father in Chicago. Part 3 involves chapters twenty-one through twenty-nine which explains Sara’s teenage years growing up with her sister Nell and no longer associating with being a green horn. Part 4 involves chapters thirty through thirty-six in which the author introduces the narrative of his father meeting his mother through unusual circumstances. The author compares his mother’s memory to historical documents and gives an in-depth example of memory revealing a narrative that historical facts can prove or disprove.

One of the strengths of this book was the cross-referencing the author detailed in analyzing all the oral histories he compiled for the book. Which leads into the second strength of the book being the author’s admittance to bias, as White understands the disposition of his family and of himself, thus taking this bias into account in writing his book. Many examples of White’s cross referencing are most blatant in Sara’s description of childhood as her timeline can be a skewed when the author checks her name and birth with the documents he collected. This is probably more prevalent with childhood due to it being Sara’s earliest memories which can often be remembered as one event. Much like the event mentioned as Sara was on the boat to America and mis-remembered the events leading up to her arrival. With each example, it can be seen that White takes into account the biases of his mother, himself, and is surprised to learn that he cannot trust even his mother’s memories.

One of the weaknesses in the book goes into the overly biased remarks of the author in regarding his father’s personal narrative. At times, the author’s side notes of his father being a cruel or hard man made it distracting to read the central narrative. There is such a thing as admitting bias, but it came to the point that it was overly exercised, thus showing an over resentment towards a man that the reader has never met. The other weakness, is large in comparison with everything else in the book as the writer does not include any footnotes, biography, or works cited. Without these citations, everything that the author put into this book regarding his cross-referencing could be a lie as there is no proof that the information ever existed. With the book being a work of history, everything that the author put into the book could be a work of fiction, without these citations, thus weakening the book as a form of a historical reference in regards to analyzing memory and history.

In conclusion, the review of Richard White’s, Remembering Ahanagran had two strong strengths of admitting biases and cross-referencing all of his mother’s memory with history, but two domineering weaknesses of over bias in regards to his father’s personal narrative and the missing citations and footnotes from the book. The strengths of this book left the reader with a deeper appreciation for history and memory coinciding with telling a narrative of the past. Yet, the weaknesses lessen this book’s chances as a reference in analyzing the theories of the past because the author neglected to include any citations for his book. Overall, the book was well written as it was enjoyable to read the author’s perception of history versus memory and White truly has a way with writing words so eloquently, it made for an enjoyable read. Thus this book will receive a rating of 3.0 stars, as it was a fun read, but the lack of citations makes it less useful for reference material in regarding memory versus history.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book prompted me to think more about my Irish grandmother and grandfather and the kind of lives they might have lived as children in Ireland and also how my great grandparents survived The Great Famine.

[Jeremy H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about Irish immigration and Chicago neighborhoods.

[Jeff Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Book Remembering Ahanagran written by Richard White, he shows the experiences of his mother when she immigrated to the United States. This book was published by the University of Washington Press in Seattle in 1998. Richard White is widely known and very well respected historian. Richard White is a well-known author and historian about The American West and Native Americans. Rich White has previously taught University of Washington, University of Utah, Michigan State University and is currently teaching at Stanford University. While many if not all of Richard White’s other books are well respected and deeply rooted in evidence this book however is different. When reading the book two strengths stood out to me was how he showed his family members immigration experience and using memories of his mother to create a narrative two weaknesses also stood out lack of citing information and biases.

In this book Richard White narrates the life of his mother Sara. The book is separated into four parts, being separated by different stages of her life. Part one of the book dives into her history of life in Ireland. Part two discusses her immigration to United States and part three shows Sara being accustomed to the way of life in the United States. The last part of this book shows the narrative of Sara meeting her husband and the memories and experiences they shared.

The strengths of this book is that it shows his families perspective on immigration to the United States. Everyone’s family has a different experience of immigration and what life in the United States was like for them. It is important when looking how families’ lives changed when the immigrated and how long it took them to be accustomed to how things were in the United States. Another strength in this book is using his mother’s memories to create a narrative. Throughout the book Richard White uses his mother’s memories to create a narrative of immigration to American and how immigrants changed when they arrived and started to live in America.

The weaknesses of the book are the lack of citation in the book. This is weakness because no one can know where you are receiving your information, it can be inferred that Richard White received his information through family documents that Sara had saved. Having some type of citations throughout the book would have made the book more respected, since according to Dr. Clark this was one of his least respected book Richard White has written. From reading other of Richard White’s books they are all deeply rooted in evidence and citations. Another weakness of the book biases. Every source that is used has some type of biases since the person writing the information is human and humans are inherently bias. Richard White does say that the information he used was bias but he only use information given by his mother. There was a lack of other oral histories done from a neighbor’s perspective. With his oral history with his mother she said she did not want him to use some information because it would make his father look bad. This made the book bias with its information.

In reading Remembering Ahanagran by Richard White had strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of the book are showing his family perspective of their immigration and using his mother’s memories’ to create narrative of immigration, the weaknesses were the lack of citations and the biases that were present in the book. It is important when reading this book to not get to caught up in the weakness of citations not being present in the book. I would have to give 4 stars to this book. It was a very interesting read to see how other families’ immigration to the United States affected them and how their overall experience was.

[Kaitlynn Snell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories was written by Richard White and published by the University of Washington Press in 2004. Richard White is a historian at Stanford. He studies many areas but in this book he focuses on memory and history as he uses them to write this captivating and complex narrative of his mother’s travels to America. Through documents and memories of his mother and other family members he completes this narrative constantly pointing out the conversation between memory and history. I believe that he wrote an amazing epilogue with restating the complexity of this book; however, his bias against his father in this story is too much to ignore.

This book is about Sara, Richard White’s mother and he journey over to America. It begins by talking about her life in Ireland in a small town of Ahanagran. It then discusses how she is sent for from America by her father to help work and make money. It then discusses her new live and the adjustments made to her identity in order to fit in to American society. It then brings in her life as she starts to take up her own path and marries, which eventually leads to having children and starting her own life in America.

The epilogue was my favorite part of the entire book because of how well written it is and how well is represents the complexity of this book. He restates his theories and his many different thesis statements. He also discusses the complex network that revolves around memory and history. He describes the relationship as a dangerous conversation between the two on page 302 of this book. He does an excellent job of showing the importance of memories place with in history and how it comes into effect through this book he created about his mother’s immigration and her life before and after.

The book does have its biases, especially when he introduces his father into the narrative. He addresses these biases already as he is the son of the main character of this book and he continues to address them throughout because of his own memory comes into effect. However, once he announces his father’s presents, he begins to have underlining hints of grievances against his father through his own memory and it creates a huge flaw within this story. For example, on page 247, his states that their marriage was a long and tumultuous one. Again on page 245, he describes his memory of his father in a negative light because he knew of him as nothing but. He describes him as have sudden and terrifying eruptions of anger. With this acknowledgement, he discredits himself as he writes about is father because from then on there are underlining hints of biases toward his father. I believe this book could have been better written if he tried to focus mostly on his father’s identity without his own prejudices.

Remembering Ahanagran is an amazing book that reveals the complexity of memory and history with in the conclusion of the story; however, because of his biases against his father he discredits his own writing. This book is significant because it demonstrates the complexity of memory and history and many theories of identity and place as well. It also allows for a person to see these theories in perspective to someone’s actual life. This historical fiction demonstrates the complex relationship between memory and history as well making it impossible to deny the relationship between the two. I think this book was an amazing book and I would give it a high rating for demonstrating theories influence within our lives.

[Steffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the book Remembering Ahanagran historian Richard White provides readers with an insight to his family life. This book was published with the University of Washington Press in 2004. White is an established historian specializing in the history of the American West, he works for Stanford University. During the duration of writing this he acquired help from fellow historians: Robin Stacey, George Behlmer, Hillel Kieval, and Thomas Pressly in order to provide needed details on Irish history. Richard is not an expert on Irish history, in fact he mentions it in the very beginning of his acknowledgements that all of this has little to do with his expertise. It is rather interesting to learn the different styles of writing. I have read other books by White, and this was is different in contrast. All though the book provides readers with interesting history to observe, there are many strengths and weaknesses in his book. The weaknesses including biases and citations and the strengths of having an inside look as well as having multiple perspectives provide a look into the book that is the White legacy.

Throughout his book White narrates the story of one Sara, his mother. The way he divides the book is quite effective, starting with Part 1, this is where it describes Sarah’s history and life in Ireland. The second part discusses her immigration into America. Following that the third is about becoming accustomed to the United States, after all it was a huge change for Sara. The fourth part is all about her adult life, including events such as the meeting of her husband and their lives together.

The strengths in the book were the perspectives as well as the inside story provided. White used different oral histories through his novel, this makes the story more accurate because if multiple people are saying the same thing, then the source has an increased chance of accuracy. Not only the amount of oral histories used was good but the idea of the usage of memory in order to create history. Memory is flawed and can change based on the individual however, it allows for another perspective to be present. Another strength is the access to an inside story. This gives details that someone outside of the family would not be able to gain.

The flaws however are the reason why historians criticize this book. First to start with the obvious and apparent bias involved. At one point in the book White tells the readers how he indeed tried to include parts about his father but his mother would rather not share due to the idea of not speaking ill of the dead. This lead the story down a dangerous path, especially since he did not include footnotes at all in his work. Historians used these weaknesses in order to criticize his work, without the usage of footnotes, this creates an idea of lack of accuracy.

All though White’s book includes weaknesses such as lack of citation and biases, there are strengths to it as well such as different perspectives and an insider's look at the life of the White family. Overall I give the book a 4 rating. This because the weaknesses are most definitely there however, historians must realize that oral history and memories can most definitely be a huge part in making a cohesive history.

[Brianna Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1998 by the University of Washington Press was Richard White’s book Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories. This was White's way of documenting his mothers memories of her and her family as they gradually left Ireland for America, yet he does so through the lens of analyzing both memory and texts as historical sources. At times the book reads a bit dry, and some of his wording in his analysis of the memories/texts paints a murky picture of what he's trying to convey to readers, however White manages to keep his audience hooked with intriguing family events and great academic analysis of various primary sources.

The book goes, for the most part, strictly in chronological order. White begins by setting up the historical context of his family's, in particular his mother's, experiences in Ireland. He then details her trip from Ireland to the United States where she settles, with much of her family, in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago. He illustrates her struggles to breach the cultural gap of her new country, attempting to act more like an American girl than an Irish one. After some time in America, Sara, his mother, marries the man who would later become White's father. White analyzes throughout the book the differences in family stories and various documents from the time, and uses pieces of both to stitch together his family's story.

White wrote this book using several primary and secondary sources to create a family history of his mothers life from being born in Ireland through to adulthood and marriage in America. White manages to find many government documents and various newspaper articles and the like to line up with his mothers stories, and sometimes they corroborate her statements and other times they differ and White illustrates for the audience how he determines which source, memory or text, is the most erred.

In this book, White has illustrated an amazing story so there are parts where it reads like a novel that can't be put down, and then he interjects with evidence outside of the stories and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of both sources, bringing the reader back to the true purpose of the book. Sometimes this constant repartee between memory and text and analysis can give the reader whiplash of the mind, going back and forth trying to understand what really happened and what the author is trying to say about the sources. The true meanings that White is trying to get across are difficult to discern from time to time.

White does a good job of showing how memory is indeed a valid source to use when doing historical research, mad he does a wonderful job as an author of sticking to the goal he sets up at the beginning of analyzing as a historian rather than getting swept up in the stories. White shows how memory can be flawed, yet still valuable, and does a great job of illustrating flaws found in texts, showing that to tell the most complete story, historians must use a variety of sources and perspectives. This work gives historians a fresh perspective on using memories and on human errors in official documents, and is a veritable roadmap for anyone interested in studying history through memory.

[Melia Dayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

History is the interpretation of past events and although never completely objective, it is the mission of every historian to use primary source evidence to create the most comprehensive and valid story possible. Memory on the other hand is completely objective and is based on an individual's personal feelings and experiences. In his 1998 book Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories, historian Richard White combines history and memory into a narrative about his mother and her immigration to America. White creates a beautiful and intimate narrative of his mother's life drawing on both history and memory, however the book does lack true historical methodology and documentation leaving the book more in the biography realm than a historical work.
White's book follows his mother, Sara, through her life experiences including her time in Ireland, move to America, and her experiences trying to become American. Part one covers Sara's time in Ireland, specifically Ahanagran, and is largely based on memory sources. Part two of the book is about the move and immediate transition to America and is followed by stories about the cultural transitions Sara went through in part three. The book ends with part four and an epilogue that wraps up the connections White made between history and memory found within the narrative of his mother's life.
The writing of a comprehensive story of a person's life inherently requires the inclusion of personal stories and the author must try to piece together the memories into a story. White's book is unique in that he tries to piece these memories together with evidence from history to place his mother's story into a larger context. The combination of both history and memory provides a level of validity to the memories giving them historical value but the memories told by Sara provide a colorful and intriguing story. Memory can be used as a historical source just not be taken as history because all historical sources are inherently bias.
The one weakness to be found in this book, is not truly a weakness unless the book is judged according to historical academic standards, is the lack of cited historical evidence. White attempts to place his mother's memories in a broader context including the social and political movements in Ireland and America during her life. White does give examples and stories about what was happening but they lack concrete citations and evidence. At times, White even claims that he has no evidence to back up the stories of his mother.
Richard White's book Remembering Ahanagran tells the story of White's mother through memory and history and balances out the use of both, however the lack of evidence can at times detract of the story. The book overall is a great read though and I would recommend it to anyone interested in either a good story or a book that looks into the study of history and memory.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent exploration by the author into the role that memories and oral history serve and compare to academic history. White used his own family and their stories as the basis for his material. The surface story White tells is his mother's origins in Ireland - the politics, the poverty, and the cleaving to the land. Sara becomes one of millions to leave her homeland and arrive in America to make a new life. Although she arrived with no money and no idea what it meant to be 'American', she was welcomed into a web of her already immigrated relatives who quickly demonstrated what was not American; mainly an accent and a farm fresh look. Through their derision, she adapted and ultimately became confident enough to move beyond the family ties to become independent career woman, and eventually married a Jewish soldier.

In telling this story, White takes the oral history his mother and relatives have passed down to him and examined it through the eyes of the professional historian. As much as he wanted to believe certain aspects about his own family's origins, his training called him to begin searching for the 'hard evidence' (immigration, court and school records, etc.) that historians cherish. Sometimes the families stories were corroborated, but in many cases he found that memories had been altered (purposely or not is unable to be determined) usually just slightly so that it better served the conscious of the story teller and the narrative of their life they wanted told. White's story is as much of a warning with that hazards of dealing with memory as it is to show how beneficial it can be to have the 'soft evidence' of oral stories where the hard evidence trail grows cold. Without his mother's stories, this book would never have been possible and the rich narrative that makes it such a pleasure to read would have been lost. In essence, passports a story does not make, and stories without evidence become factually suspicious.

Because he used his own living family, there is an overriding sensitivity and at times an unwillingness for him to probe further into subjects that his aging mother decided were to painful for her to contend with. At certain points, as a reader and a historian, I wanted to know more information, and it seemed frustrating for him not to get answers when his only possible source for stories where there were no official records sat aging in front of him. Perhaps a good historian would have pushed deeper, but White's professional ambitions took a backseat to being a good and sensitive son who knew when it was counterproductive to keep pressing. For his wisdom of restraint, I have to admire him and only hope that I will do as well.

Fluidly written, White's work is especially appealing to anyone interested in Irish history, and the Irish immigrant experience.

[Savannah Mitchell]

Richard White, a historian and a Margaret Bryne Professor and Stanford University, published Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories, one of his lesser-known books, in 1998. This book, is based upon his family history and essentially his mother’s memories, however, it is not considered to be a memoir, because White injects the narrative with hard facts, questioning the stories he has been told. This book, while controversial in the academic community, has many strengths throughout it, but is not without its issues such as the lack of fluidity through his changing topics.
This book begins with an overview of White’s Irish heritage and family. Sara, his mother, immigrated to the United States in her teen years, and recalls her upbringing, and the years after she immigrated with family members in Chicago. Through these recollections, the reader grows to understand the trials, tribulations, and transitions Sara went through as she adjusted to American life. Many of these recollections are intermixed with historical information to try to place her memories in a larger picture.
One of the strong points in this book is the way White addresses his biases. Obviously every historian has biases, but because he is so close to the topic, he successfully reiterates his possible prejudices throughout the book. However, he also questions the stories he is told, and compares them to factual historical events. For example in chapter five when exploring the Eddie Carmody murder, he questions his mother’s recollections, and asks how, at two, his mother could remember what was going on at the time. He then uses history to add context to his mother’s memories of the Troubled times. This is not the only occurrence of his questioning and he repeatedly moves back and forth between his mothers recollections, and his other research.
Unfortunately, this flipping back and forth between narrative and analysis leaves the reader disoriented and almost with a sense of whip lash. While his mother’s recollections are captivating, the transitions between these intricate family narratives, theoretical analysis, and accurate historical events lack fluidity. These irregular transitions leave the reader confused about his point and argument at times.
Despite the flaws in this work, Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories, is just that, an amazing wealth of memories throughout history. The book successfully addresses and validates the use of recollections as sources, despite their inherent flaws, and demonstrates their value in history. Throw this family history and family recollections, White explores the relationship memory and history have with one another.

[Savannah McCauley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remembering Ahanagran was written by Richard White, an acclaimed historian and author of almost ten books. He is currently a professor of history at Stanford University, although he previously taught at Universities in Utah, Washington, and Michigan. One of these schools, the University of Washington, published Remembering Ahanagran in 1998. The book does an incredible job of recreating a narrative by combining history and memory with theoretical analysis, while it falls short by being unspecific and wordy.

Remembering Ahanagran is a story of Sara Walsh that is divided into four sections, each of which focuses on one phase of her life. The first section explores the history of her family, as well as her time in Ireland. The second section moves on to discuss her immigration to America, while the third explains the way that she acclimated to living in the United States. The final section describes the way that she met her husband, and the short-term progression of their married lives.

This book has many strengths, as it precisely recreates the narrative of the past and explains ways to combine history and memory. Remembering Ahanagran does an exceptional job of using memory to recreate a narrative, while also verifying that memory through recorded historical documents to ensure accuracy. Additionally, it is a great guide about ways to mix theory into a work while still maintaining a smooth narrative. Throughout its inclusion of these two things, Remembering Ahanagran still manages to be clear and understandable, thus making it a very powerful book.

Unfortunately, it has downfalls in its wordy presentation of the, sometimes extraneous, material. First, it tends to include a lot more information than is really necessary by adding in constant deviations from the plot, that are sometimes not justified. It also often fails to explain the reasons that this information is helpful in expanding the narrative. Through this, Remembering Ahanagran becomes unspecific and scattered in its presentation, as well as wordy in its numerous definitions.

In spite of its flaws of including too much information and being wordy, this book was an incredible read because of its powerful narrative and instructive use of theory. It made Sara’s story seem real and relatable, while maintaining the upmost amount of historical accuracy and theoretical analysis. I would rate Remembering Ahanagran four out of five stars, because it gave me a deeper understanding of history in a way that was interesting and held my attention.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1998 the University of Washington Press published Richard White’s book Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories. It was written by White as a way of honoring his mother and telling her story. However, White explains in his introduction that as a historian he will write her story but analyze the memory and documents of the book. After digging up his mothers memories, White then pieced together the blanks to create his families story. White does a great job connecting history and memory however; due to the split focus of the book it is easier to miss his meaning or purpose in each part.

The book follows the story of White’s mother Sara. White sets up his book with a history of Ireland and his family. Then follows his mother across the Atlantic Ocean to America. She settles in Chicago with her father and becomes part of the Irish community there. In America Sara meets the author’s father and gets married. At the end White focuses the effects of memory and the past.

While the book stays concentrated in a chronological view most of the way through the book of his mother’s life. He uses the memories and documents he has from his family along with things written in history to establish this timeline and write his book. With almost every memory White uses he brings a part of history along with it.

Because the book had a dual focus it became harder to focus on the memory while remembering the story. Getting caught up in the history of Ireland and Ahanagran became easier as more history and memory were provided and took away from his historical evaluation of the memory. Which can be said about the opposite. Bouncing back and forth became a pattern of the book.

The book correlates Sara’s memories with White’s history but split’s the book’s purpose. While White acknowledges that he has attempted something different with his book by bringing memory and history into one book he succeeds in his attempt to support memory with history. He stays true to his historian roots while compiling his mother’s memories. The book becomes an example for future memory explorations and their use in history.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated what White was trying to do here, but I felt like too often this book ended up as simply a biography of his mother. And his mother was clearly interesting and deserving of having her story told, but what makes this book special are the parts where White examines places where her stories and the stories of his family differ from the actual history that he can dig up as a historian. That's where this book comes alive, and after I while I started to feel like those parts were sort of few and far between. It was really interesting to read about the ways that the stories people tell about the past end up simplifying the past, and shaving away gray areas to produce an easy narrative that isn't always all that accurate. I liked reading about the stories White's family tells about 'the Troubles' and about the stories his Dad's side of the family chooses to tell about his Grandfather, but then he would linger on his mother's job at the airport, or her earlier job as a beautician of sorts, and those stories don't seem to fit much with what makes this book special.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the story part of this book--when he actually talked about his family. He spent far too much time telling us how his mother confused memories with fact. Okay, okay. He made his point but didn't need to harp on it. I wish he would have had footnotes or endnotes. I wanted to see where he was getting his information. At the end of the book he talked some of the sources.

He did a good job trying to figure out why his grandfather's information on his naturalization papers was different than known family information. It remains a mystery to the family and is not uncommon in immigrant families. On Jack Walsh's declaration of intention he said he came into the country in 1927 but he left Ireland in 1924. There were other differences too and there is no one alive to answer some of the questions.

[Brie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting examination of the relationship between history and memory. This was Richard White's attempt to reach out to a broader audience, so the lack of any sort of notes is annoying at times, since a large part of his analysis is based on where information comes from. Overall, an entertaining look into both the worlds of historical research and also the role of the past in our everyday lives, and how those sometimes get blended. Overall, this is an examination of how historians (and everyday people) use the past to make sense of the present, blend reality and fantasy, and essentially search for truth in our examination of the past.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professionally and personally, I have explored my family and its past, and this book speaks to me with a depth and an excitement hard to match. White ties his mother's stories with the history of those times past. The history and the memory do not always agreed, but neither is complete without the other. I've known this throughout my career as history writer, researcher, and editor; reading White is like hearing a familiar tale told in a new, deeper, more insightful way.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

White is a historian - he tries to understand the 'truth' in his mother's stories of this tiny town in Ireland as compared to the 'truth' he learns through professional research: oral history vs. traditional source research on a very personal level

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another from the "back of my list." Time to read it or remove it after five years on the list.

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkable book in which the author established a "conversation" between his mother's stories about her past--her memories--and his reconstruction of her past based on historical evidence.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading as an introduction to a grad level Public History class at UMass.