I have always enjoyed German food, music, folk art, and the like, but never explored Germany’s history and what the Nazi era says about my ancestors. I was a toddler while my dad served in the U.S. army during WW2. I realize now that nobody in our big extended family ever talked about Nazi Germany!
Thank you for this and this whole series! I'm still processing through so many thoughts and feelings which has been so confusing (thanks white supremacy culture) but this had been resonating so deeply. My goodness, thank you.
If I may make a song suggestion, it's not Irish per se but a moving song about Irish resistance to colonialism and oppression. I certainly find it very moving and powerful.
So much good stuff here, but the phrase I'll take with me is that freedom is taken back through resistance. I've been thinking a lot about one of my heroes, Fr. Dan Berrigan, lately, a master at nonviolent resistance. He said, "One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the United States around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better."
Thank you for this information and connection to the particular history of colonialism for the Irish people. I am 95% Irish and my grandparents were Irish /English immigrants to the US in the early 1900’s. Both of my grandmothers were maids for wealthy families in New England.
My ancestors were all
from the west of Ireland on both my maternal and paternal relatives. I’ve been to the west of Ireland and climbed Croagh Patrick feeling the deep sadness of my Irish history. I am a visual artist and have been gathering the documents to become an Irish citizen. Will I be accepted in Ireland as an Irish American? I know about the concept of “Blow-in’s”, people from away who have lived in Ireland and are never fully accepted.
Doesn’t my DNA mean something with the epigenetic traits passed down from my Irish ancestors?
Thank you for sharing this. The weight of history is often felt in the body before the mind fully understands it, and I can only imagine what it must have been like to climb Croagh Patrick and feel the depth of that ancestral grief. That pull toward home, toward something that was severed, is real. And the process of reclaiming it—through art, through citizenship, through understanding—is powerful.
I hear the question in your words: Will I be accepted? It’s such a deeply human longing, to return to the place of your ancestors and be seen as belonging. And yet, belonging is rarely granted through legal status or even blood—it is built, cultivated, and sometimes, negotiated. Irish identity, like so many others, has been shaped not just by ancestry but by experience, by language, by land. The concept of Blow-in exists because place-based cultures recognize that history is not just carried in DNA but in the lived rhythms of a land, in the stories told from within a place rather than about it.
And that doesn’t mean you aren’t Irish. It just means that being Irish—truly integrating into that identity beyond heritage—may take more than documents and lineage. It will require listening, learning, and approaching the culture with humility rather than expectation.
As for epigenetics, absolutely—our ancestors’ experiences imprint on us in ways we are only beginning to understand. The famine, the colonization, the displacement, the survival—it’s carried forward. But the question I would offer is: What do we do with that inheritance? If it is more than just a claim to identity, how do we allow it to shape us in ways that are meaningful and liberatory?
I would love to know—how has your art been shaped by this journey? And how does reclaiming your Irish heritage inform how you move through the world today?
Beautiful questions and you illuminated thoughts I haven’t thought about.. I love the reflection of listening and learning with humility rather than expectations.. I’ve lived in Canada and married a Canadian from Prince Edward Island. To feel a part of the Island culture, I had to do just that .. listening-rather talking. Shaking off that American hyper individuality.. Appreciate this conversation. Thank you!
Thanks for this. I am an Irish-American fish and I know my history. I make the plain soda bread with Irish flour - no raisins or fennel - and we eat it with remembrance, similar to how Jews eat traditional, meaningful foods at Passover.
Why do you think the Irish identify with the Palestinians in Gaza? It is a similar experience.
I really appreciate you for spending the time to put together such a powerful critique. I think about this all the time—what my ancestors lost…culture, language, beliefs, folkways, history. I have been researching and learning about what those things would have been. I haven’t had the words to express what you’ve just laid out, so thank you again. I found this song last summer and listen to it often—“Land of My Other” from The Breath. It is beautiful and touches on what you have written about. https://youtu.be/S-7VQ9N8vVE?si=UZK7PmGKuMoDbg6i
I have always enjoyed German food, music, folk art, and the like, but never explored Germany’s history and what the Nazi era says about my ancestors. I was a toddler while my dad served in the U.S. army during WW2. I realize now that nobody in our big extended family ever talked about Nazi Germany!
There is a reason they are called the silent generation
Thank you for this and this whole series! I'm still processing through so many thoughts and feelings which has been so confusing (thanks white supremacy culture) but this had been resonating so deeply. My goodness, thank you.
If I may make a song suggestion, it's not Irish per se but a moving song about Irish resistance to colonialism and oppression. I certainly find it very moving and powerful.
https://www.last.fm/music/David+Rovics/_/St.+Patrick+Battalion
Thank you for this music! I’m so glad this series is resonating with you and that you are sitting with all of the feelings
So much good stuff here, but the phrase I'll take with me is that freedom is taken back through resistance. I've been thinking a lot about one of my heroes, Fr. Dan Berrigan, lately, a master at nonviolent resistance. He said, "One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the United States around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better."
Thank you for this information and connection to the particular history of colonialism for the Irish people. I am 95% Irish and my grandparents were Irish /English immigrants to the US in the early 1900’s. Both of my grandmothers were maids for wealthy families in New England.
My ancestors were all
from the west of Ireland on both my maternal and paternal relatives. I’ve been to the west of Ireland and climbed Croagh Patrick feeling the deep sadness of my Irish history. I am a visual artist and have been gathering the documents to become an Irish citizen. Will I be accepted in Ireland as an Irish American? I know about the concept of “Blow-in’s”, people from away who have lived in Ireland and are never fully accepted.
Doesn’t my DNA mean something with the epigenetic traits passed down from my Irish ancestors?
Thank you for sharing this. The weight of history is often felt in the body before the mind fully understands it, and I can only imagine what it must have been like to climb Croagh Patrick and feel the depth of that ancestral grief. That pull toward home, toward something that was severed, is real. And the process of reclaiming it—through art, through citizenship, through understanding—is powerful.
I hear the question in your words: Will I be accepted? It’s such a deeply human longing, to return to the place of your ancestors and be seen as belonging. And yet, belonging is rarely granted through legal status or even blood—it is built, cultivated, and sometimes, negotiated. Irish identity, like so many others, has been shaped not just by ancestry but by experience, by language, by land. The concept of Blow-in exists because place-based cultures recognize that history is not just carried in DNA but in the lived rhythms of a land, in the stories told from within a place rather than about it.
And that doesn’t mean you aren’t Irish. It just means that being Irish—truly integrating into that identity beyond heritage—may take more than documents and lineage. It will require listening, learning, and approaching the culture with humility rather than expectation.
As for epigenetics, absolutely—our ancestors’ experiences imprint on us in ways we are only beginning to understand. The famine, the colonization, the displacement, the survival—it’s carried forward. But the question I would offer is: What do we do with that inheritance? If it is more than just a claim to identity, how do we allow it to shape us in ways that are meaningful and liberatory?
I would love to know—how has your art been shaped by this journey? And how does reclaiming your Irish heritage inform how you move through the world today?
Beautiful questions and you illuminated thoughts I haven’t thought about.. I love the reflection of listening and learning with humility rather than expectations.. I’ve lived in Canada and married a Canadian from Prince Edward Island. To feel a part of the Island culture, I had to do just that .. listening-rather talking. Shaking off that American hyper individuality.. Appreciate this conversation. Thank you!
Thanks for this. I am an Irish-American fish and I know my history. I make the plain soda bread with Irish flour - no raisins or fennel - and we eat it with remembrance, similar to how Jews eat traditional, meaningful foods at Passover.
Why do you think the Irish identify with the Palestinians in Gaza? It is a similar experience.
I really appreciate you for spending the time to put together such a powerful critique. I think about this all the time—what my ancestors lost…culture, language, beliefs, folkways, history. I have been researching and learning about what those things would have been. I haven’t had the words to express what you’ve just laid out, so thank you again. I found this song last summer and listen to it often—“Land of My Other” from The Breath. It is beautiful and touches on what you have written about. https://youtu.be/S-7VQ9N8vVE?si=UZK7PmGKuMoDbg6i