Unsettled

Rosaleen McDonagh

Description

Rosaleen McDonagh writes fearlessly about a diverse experience of being Irish. 'Unsettled' explores racism, ableism, abuse and resistance as well as the bonds of community, family and friendship. As an Irish Traveller writing from a feminist perspective, McDonagh's essays are rich and complex, raw and honest, and, above all else, uncompromising.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Skein Press
• Date de parution: 09 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781916493544
• Langue: English

Extrait

Unsettled
Rosaleen McDonagh
Skein Press
2021
First published in 2021 by Skein Press
www.skeinpress.com
Copyright © Rosaleen McDonagh
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.
All rights reserved.
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-9164935-3-7 eISBN 978-1-9164935-4-4
Skein Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Design and typesetting: Alan Keogh
Printed by L&C Printing Group
Cover art: ‘Sequestered Nook’ by Mo Kelly
Dedication
For my family. I’m in you, you’re in me.
And for Ronnie Fay, my friend and mentor.
Acknowledgements
This collection honours the memory of my wonderful parents, Rose and Bernard, who are ever-present in my writing. Thank you to my family, Bridget, Winnie, Mary, Theresa, Anne and Eileen, Margaret, Jules, Geraldine and Tina, Brian, Eddie, Martin, Patrick, Tom, John, Charlie, James and baby David. Love and laughter to all my brilliant, bold and beautiful nieces and nephews. To my extended family, including all my wonderful sisters- and brothers-in-law, and to the extended Pancake McDonagh crew, you have all supported me so much, from plaiting my hair to fixing my buttons and buckles. I am lucky to have a family who have always poured love and wisdom into me. Special thanks to our Jules who took care of me during my Covid experience.
Thank you to my friend and mentor, Ronnie Fay, who changed the course of my life and supported me to develop a Traveller feminist approach to my writing and indeed to myself. My love and gratitude always. Thank you also to Martin Collins from Pavee, my extra brother, and to all my other colleagues and friends in Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre.
Enormous gratitude goes to Olivia Smith, who has sat with me and typed for the last two years. Her job is much more than a typist. Her patience, diligence and ambition to ensure she understands every word I say is empowering.
To all my wonderful Personal Assistants, Natalie Flood, Mary Torley, Arlene Bonner, Luiza Ramos, Sylvia Turnikova, Lubica Revajova, Agnieszka Nowak, Aisling O’Connor, I thank you for your support and generosity.
My thanks to all those who advised me along the journey and to those writers, directors, actors, activists and loyal friends who have been plaguing me to write this book for a long time, and who each gave me a sentence, a line, a phrase, as well as a hot dinner and many cups of tea along the way: Katherine (Ka) O’Donnell and Suzy Byrne, Mary Dhont, Jim Culleton, Andrew Finlay, Séamus and Siobhán, Sarah Binchy, Olwen Dawe, Iffat Khalid, Hubert McCormack, John Dolan, Mat Frasier, Michael Dillon, Michael O’Loughlin, Eileen Daly, Amy Hassett, Maria Ní Fhlatharta, Sinéad Burke, Cathy Belton, Sorcha Fox, Kathleen Lawrence, Anne Burke, Mikey Power, Derek Spiers, Michael Finucane, Regina McQuillan, Michael and Rukhsana Ingle, Cathriona Russell, Karen Dempsey, Niamh O’Donnell, Willie White, Cian O’Brien, Philly McMahon, Fintan O’Toole, Fionnuala Mulcahy, Róisín Ingle, Rachel Collins, Mark O’Halloran, Mary Duffy, Stuart Carolan, Niall Crowley, Mick Peelo, Elizabeth Reapy and Rachel O’Flanagan.
To Fionnuala and Gráinne of Skein Press, who took me on a journey that brought my writing to another level, thank you.
Donal, it was always only and ever you. We made such mischief. You put colour and pride into this unsettled woman. You were in a place one time. When our parents went to see you, they had safety straps on you in the bed. Mam kept the staff talking so Dad could undo the straps. He took you in his arms and ran down five floors of steps. Mam held back the staff, saying you needed fresh air. We escaped at high speed back to Donegal from Dublin, non-stop. Mam was in the back with you, me and Winne. We were all smiles.
A few days later the police were waiting at the dole office for Dad.
— Bridget, big sister
Contents
Introduction
Mam and Me
Crowning Glory
Stigma
Body Punishment
Clamped
Queer Connections
Synergy
Caked On
Shame
Vernacular
I Am Not Your Knacker
Politics and Polemics
Vacuous
Ink, Blood, Tears
The Best Beoir
Winding back the Clock
Introduction
This book is a love letter. An apology. A whispered forgiveness.
I apologise to my family for not allowing them access to some of the details of my life until this moment. The denial was not out of malice or a feeling that they wouldn’t understand. Those conversations were too hard, and for me it’s easier to write than to speak. A writer in the family brings a fear of exposure. Nowhere in this book or indeed my life would my family ever be referred to in any exploitative manner. The nature of our relationship is loving and respectful.
A lot of this book charts how I was bought and sold by various service providers and how those experiences haunt me and my family. Special school, nursing home, settled housing, adult residential centre, the gamut of what it is to be Irish and to have an impairment. This life of mine exposed me to mainstream or settled culture. Being away from my family and my community, the force of that assimilation, broke me.
It’s easy to write about how you are wronged by external forces. It’s much more complex to delve into the harm you did to yourself. Living with trauma requires strategic thinking and planning. My physical, emotional and psychological safety is always a worry. Every paragraph in every essay came with tears. Over the last two years, during the course of drafting, redrafting, editing and working towards a finished book, all kinds of emotions and fears have twisted my heart and mind. This collection is a celebration of not having succeeded in taking my own life. Writing is a gift that has saved me from myself. Practising and redoing, searching for the essence, is often like fishing, searching for the salmon but finding a nest of eels. Patience is the best attribute that any writer can hope to cultivate.
My journey into formal education brought me a sense of triumph and pride. However, working in Traveller organisations was also part of my healing. It gave me tremendous excitement, ambition and purpose. It was where I met other Travellers. The work, the struggle, the activism formed another part of the education that was not afforded to me as a child. The time, the attention, the investment and the challenge from Pavee Point rounded me into a more generous person. Those ten years working in that environment remain one of the most important periods in my life. Once I joined the community development family, I never wanted to leave.
My public persona, my politics, give expression to a notional self-love and pride. These tools of survival and empowerment are elusive. You offer them to others but rarely take time to use them yourself. In my everyday reality, that self-love doesn’t protect me from racial harassment, sexism and ableism. You don’t forgive yourself when you are called a Knacker, a cunt, a useless cripple. That self-love is ever-evolving. It’s not always at the ready when needed.
My intention was to write a book of fiction. Short stories to echo my favourite writers, Alice Munro and Elizabeth Strout. But first there had to be a clearing out, an excavation of the rubble scattered in and around my life. This manuscript is held together by all that debris. Ironically, it was a man who motivated me to write these essays. I’ll never meet this man, but I called on him on several occasions to help me, to inspire me, to show me what to do next. This man, the writer James Baldwin, gave me the courage to write about racism in a clear and honest way. His writing has greatly influenced my work. By all accounts, he was torn between the polemics and the plays, a conflict familiar to me. He was as messed-up as I am. His pain, coming from racism and homophobia, resulted in alcoholism. My predilections were for food and self-harm. Baldwin’s search for love and serenity brought out the best in his writing. He speaks to me on many different levels. I share his fear of being judged the harshest by my peers. This book is not the Traveller story. It’s just one of many to come.
Often, it’s said that Travellers are very hard to reach, that we’re a closed community. Artists, writers and researchers have tried to present and misappropriate Traveller identity and culture. Some people may be disappointed that I haven’t written about feuding and criminality. Some may accuse me of sanitising Traveller identity while embellishing violence from settled people. That projected stereotyping and racism doesn’t interest me. The appetite for that trajectory comes from outside the community. My interest in Traveller culture is about family, loyalty, love, confusion and a discerning sense of humanity. Our community continues to be expected to absorb otherness. As a writer from the Traveller community, my job is not to perpetuate longstanding unbalanced notions of who and what we are.
Part of the beauty of ageing is realising human relationships are complex. The assault of racism, or any form of discrimination, continues to muddle up people’s sense of identity and place. It’s easier sometimes to write about what settled people did to me. However, there has been love from settled people, there has been help from settled people. In this book, there is reference to very important friendships that I’ve had. In these relationships, the wider picture of racism sits on the shoulders of those settled friends, many of whom have defended me when the racism became too much. It took me many years to learn to trust and love these individuals who have enriched my life. It takes courage to step away from the crowd and challenge your settled family or neighbours. My learning and growing were as a result of these fundamental people in my life. The ingredients of strong, deep friendships are love, loyalty and solid