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Rites of passage: The coffin ship as a site of immigrants' identity formation in Irish and Irish American fiction, 1855–85

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 8; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14788810.2011.589697

1740-4649

Marguérite Corporaal, Christopher Cusack,

Asian American and Pacific Histories

Abstract The statue of Annie Moore and her brothers in Cobh, Ireland, is one of the many lieux de mémoire which seek to crystallise the recollections of the Irish exodus to North America between 1845 and 1900. Scholars have examined the monuments erected to commemorate the massive exodus of 1.8 million Irish to Canada and the United States. Hitherto, however, very little attention has been paid to a transatlantic corpus of fiction, mainly written by the so-called "Famine generation," which recollects the conditions of Irish immigrants to the New World. These novels and stories, by Irish writers at home who witnessed the outflux of population as well as authors who had migrated themselves to escape starvation and poverty, not only describe their migrant characters' conditions of departure from the homeland and settlement in North American communities. An equally central role is reserved for the transition from home to diaspora, on-board the so-called "coffin ships." While the texts remember the fearful realities of poor hygiene and high mortality rates on-board, the voyage also has a symbolic function, featuring as a rite of passage for the characters and their sense of ethnic identity. This article discusses several examples of the iconic image of the coffin ship in Irish and Irish American fiction on immigration, written between 1855 and 1885. In these texts, the storms that the immigrant characters have to endure during their passage at sea prefigure the trials the characters will face in the urban New World. Moreover, the coffin ships represent microcosmic Irish "imagined communities" that function as utopian heterotopia where the cultural clashes experienced in the homeland and the pending assimilation in the New World have to be negotiated. Keywords: Irish diasporacoffin shipsmigrationidentity formationheterotopia Notes 1. Upton, Uncle Pat's Cabin, 275. 2. See Fanning, Exiles of Erin, 6. See also Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 104. 3. CitationAssmann, "Collective Memory," 129. 4. Nora, "Between Memory and History," 12. 5. See CitationBlair, "Irish Famine Memorial"; CitationGauthier, "Le Memorial"; CitationMcMahon, "Montreal's Ship Fever Monument"; and CitationMcLean, Event and Its Terrors. 6. For the term "medium of recollection," see CitationErll and Rigney, "Literature," 111. 7. See Morash, Writing the Irish Famine; CitationKelleher, Feminization of Famine; and Fegan, Literature. 8. CitationKenny, American Irish, 104. 9. CitationMiller, Emigrants and Exiles, 292. 10. See CitationQuigley, "Grosse Île," 136; CitationBartoletti, Black Potatoes, 128. 11. "Plight of Famine Immigrants." 12. CitationDonnelly, Great Irish Potato Famine, 179. 13. "CitationDistressed Emigrants." 14. CitationLandsberg, Prosthetic Memory, 2. 15. Conyngham, O'Donnells of Glen Cottage, vi. 16. CitationMorash, Writing the Irish Famine, 54. 17. For the idea of "imagined communities," see Anderson, Imagined Communities, 16. 18. For the term "heterotopia," see CitationFoucault, "Des espaces autres." 19. For the term "multidirectional memory," see CitationRothberg, "Between Auschwitz and Algeria," 162; Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 3. 20. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, 13. 21. The term is used by Landsberg in "America," 65. 22. CitationHuyssen, "Diaspora and Nation," 150. 23. CitationNora, "Between Memory and History," 12. 24. Fanning, Irish Voice in America, 56. 25. The term was coined by CitationHalbwachs in On Collective Memory, 130. 26. Cannon, Bickerton, 5. 27. Fanning, Irish Voice in America, 64. 28. Fanning, Irish Voice in America, 114–15. 29. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 10. 30. CitationRussell, Struggles of Dick Massey, 162. 31. CitationRussell, Struggles of Dick Massey, 168. 32. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 13. 33. Russell, Struggles of Dick Massey, 162, 160. 34. Russell, Struggles of Dick Massey, 376. 35. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 13. 36. Fegan, Literature, 232. 37. Russell, Struggles of Dick Massey, 374. 38. Upton, Uncle Pat's Cabin, 283. 39. Conyngham, Frank O'Donnell, 279. 40. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 323. 41. Kenny, American Irish, 114. 42. CitationIgnatiev, How the Irish, 150–3. 43. CitationMcCaffrey, "Ireland and Irish America," 3. 44. CitationAppel, "Shanties to Lace Curtains," 367. 45. Significantly, many Irish immigrants and their descendants supported the Union in the Civil War. Irish American newspapers, such as the Boston Pilot, endorsed Abraham Lincoln's appeal for volunteers. Archbishop John Joseph Hughes of New York also urged his congregation to fight in the war. The war even induced Thomas Francis Meagher to set up an Irish brigade of volunteers, which fought on the side of the Union. The Irish contribution to warfare is often viewed as a major step in furthering the acceptance of the Irish in American society. See, for instance, Ignatiev, How the Irish; CitationCallaghan, Thomas Francis Meagher. 46. CitationCannon, Bickerton, 23. 47. CitationCannon, Bickerton, 14. 48. CitationCannon, Bickerton, 8. 49. CitationCannon, Bickerton, 20–1. 50. Russell, Struggles of Dick Massey, 191. 51. Russell, Struggles of Dick Massey, 171. 52. Fanning, Irish Voice in America, 76. 53. CitationMcElgun, Annie Reilly, 122. 54. CitationMcElgun, Annie Reilly 55. CitationMcElgun, Annie Reilly, 129. 56. See CitationRadstone, "Memory Studies"; CitationKlein, "Emergence of Memory." 57. CitationCohen, Global Diasporas, 161. 58. CitationGilroy, "Black Atlantic," 54. 59. CitationJacobson, Special Sorrows, 97. 60. CitationSadlier, Bessy Conway, 22–3. 61. McCaffrey, Irish Catholic Diaspora, 83–4. 62. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 41. 63. Sadlier, Bessy Conway 64. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 45. 65. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 49. 66. McElgun, Annie Reilly, 123. 67. Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," 24. 68. Foucault, "Of Other Spaces,", 27. 69. CitationConyngham, Frank O'Donnell, 345. 70. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 16. 71. CitationHall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," 394. See also CitationBammer's work, which argues that identity is transformed during and after migration in "a constant process of negotiation" (Displacements, xv). 72. McElgun, Annie Reilly, 128. 73. CitationInnes, Woman and Nation, 16–17. 74. McElgun, Annie Reilly, 145. 75. CitationAlexander et al, Cultural Trauma, 15. 76. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 56. 77. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 51–2. 78. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 60–1. 79. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 57. 80. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 105. 81. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 62. 82. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 65. 83. Sadlier, Bessy Conway, 214. 84. Russell, Struggles of Dick Massey, 161. 85. Russell, Struggles of Dick Massey 86. Ignatiev, How the Irish, 15, 96. 87. Ignatiev, How the Irish, 137. 88. Conyngham, Frank O'Donnell, 344. 89. CitationBhabha, Location of Culture, 64.