". . . an unrepentant truth teller."
"Dezell has written a wry study of Irish Catholic America . . ."
- Entertainment Weekly magazine, March 29, 2002
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"This revelatory book . . ."
- Irishside.com, March 2002.
"For Irish Americans this is a very special book . . ."
- Frank West, November, 2001, Irish America News.
"[A] long-awaited corrective to the steady supply of cliches and misunderstanding about the Irish in American culture."
- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.
"A fascinating book that debunks myths and skewers stereotypes."
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
". . . a lively set of field notes on her journey through the Irish-American past and present. . ."
- Ralph Whitehead, Jr., Boston Globe
"Fed up with the alcoholic and bafoony image of Irish-Americans being perpetuated by drunken frat-boys swilling green beer and kitsch addicted tourists sporting "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" accoutrements, Dezell made it her personal mission to debunk these stereotypes. A journalist by profession, she incorporates textbook history, personal interviews, and hard-nosed reporting into this entertaining and thoughtful study."
- Sarah Brennan, Bookreporter.com (US)
"Maureen Dezell has produced a study of Irish America which challenges stereotypes while at the same time explaining how they arose. For those of us on this side of the Atlantic her book goes some way to explaining the Irish American phenomenon, while for Irish Americans themselves this will be a thought-provoking look at their origins. For all readers, however, it will be both entertaining and of immense interest . . . "
- The Irish Emigrant
"Dezell seems to have read just about everything about Irish Americans. Her bibliography is a compendious wonder and each chapter is filled with quotes which are carefully credited in the end notes. At the risk of catching that most dreaded of conditions a swelled head the reader of this book may come away a little prouder of the Irish in America."
- Maureen Ellen Daly, Catholic News Service
". . . a very good, sometimes witty, sometimes sad book about Irish Americans, who they are and how they came to be. . . .Dezells examination of the changing church and its influence on Irish immigrants . . . is fascinating. . . . But it's the chapter on women, Bridget, Open the Door, that is my favorite. . .
If you're Irish and you're wondering why you think and say certain things, or why most of your Irish friends have this self-deprecating sense of humor, or better still, why some of your very successful Irish friends seem embarrassed by their success, or act as if it will all end tomorrow, then this book is a great place to start."
- John F. Timoney, Philadelphia Commissioner of Police, The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, March 15, 2001 and the Irish Voice, April 4, 2001.
". . . 3,000 miles prove a perspective not nearly as bracing as the nine chapters and 220 pages of Irish America. Dezell does not warble Danny Boy. She is concise and well-organized. A chapter on the dark legacy of booze, The Creature and Related Demons, is followed by The Urge to Serve, a bright portrait of the Irish presence in international relief efforts."
- Martin F. Nolan, The Boston Globe, March 8, 2001.
"With a fabulous blend of eloquence and anecdote, insight and compassion, candor and wit, Maureen Dezell has brilliantly captured the Irish experience in America. This is truly a wonderful book."
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys and No Ordinary Time
"With this sparkling and shrewd portrait of a culture in transition, Maureen Dezell joins the ranks of the Irish American woman journalists who are as smart as they are charming."
- Nuala O'Faolain, author of Are You Somebody? and My Dream of You
". . . Irish America: Coming into Clover: The Evolution of a People and a Culture by Maureen Dezell. Dezell, a staff writer for the Boston Globe, takes a hard, funny, cynical look at Irish-Americans that will make many want to burn their tickets to Riverdance as they reassess their auntie's lace curtains.
- Dermot McEvoy, in "(Not) Only Irish Need Apply" at Publishers Weekly.com
"At last a book that dispels so much of the myth, the fairy tale, the rose-tinted, shamrock-gilded blarney that has come to represent the way Irish-American culture is often seen. Maureen Dezell gives us a vibrant, cogent social history of the Irish in this country, rooting out the cliches and stereotyping that have come to define a people. For that alone, I feel indebted to this marvelous book."
- Dennis Lehane, bestselling author of A Drink Before the War and Prayers for Rain
"Maureen Dezell is an unrepentant truth teller. With wit, insight and unsparing intelligence she succeeds in demolishing the convenient time-worn stereotypes - comforting as well as insulting - that surround Irish America. In their place, she gives us a portrait of a people as they really are, with all their strengths, and contradictions, and enduring sense of self. Irish America: Coming Into Clover is a wonderful achievement."
- Peter Quinn, author of Banished Children of Eve
"With 'Irish America: Coming Into Clover,' Maureen Dezell has done tremendous identity-affirming service for all Irish Americans who have ever been confronted by the all too familiar assault, 'just who do you think you are?' Dezell's brilliant exploration illuminates for all, the Irish American character, in its multi-layered, diverse, and sometimes paradoxical glory. And she does so in prose that mirrors that same character. This is not a traditional text, for it is written by an Irish American, herself as witty, hilarious, literary, and gifted at storytelling, as the very best of the Irish artists and social analysts she writes about.
The artistic, social, and psychological history in these pages also reveals many paths that may traverse beyond the limits of shame, stereotype, and self defeat, into an American landscape, already lush with Irish contributions in art, altruism, diversity, and a sense of community."
- Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
Irish America does its author, and her ancestral people, credit. Some will object to the book's candor on subjects - drink, religion, ambition - rarely discussed publicly. But Maureen Dezell earns the reader's trust with her openness, which lends authority to her overall positive judgment. She likes us, and in this brave and moving book she shows others why.
- Jack Beatty, Senior Editor, the Atlantic Monthly and the author of The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley, 1874-1958.
"Boston Globe reporter Dezell packs a wealth of information about and analysis of the Catholic Irish in America into a relatively short book. Comparing America's Irish and the homegrown variety, Dezell tackles eight broad topics: the Irish American image, the Irish diaspora during the great mid-nineteenth-century famine, the jestingly named CWASP (Catholic or Celtic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), Irish matriarchy and feminism, the Irish and alcohol, the Irish disposition to public service, Irish Catholicism, and the "New Irish" birthed by economic and pop-cultural globalism. Revelations abound, such as the fact that Irish Americans suffer from alcoholism far more than the Irish of Eire; that there are nearly as many former as active nuns in the U.S. today; and that Jack Kennedy, that exemplary Irish public servant, once said that politics beat the hell out of chasing a dollar like his old man did. Other topics, such as Irish sentimentality and the shame-filled anger it disguises, recur throughout the book. A superb example of popular ethnic studies."
- Ray Olson, Booklist Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved
Those who harbor the desire to burn their auntie's lace curtains, secretly loathe Riverdance or relish the newfound clout of all things Irish will appreciate this unflinching look at the 20 million or so Irish Catholics in the U.S. Beginning with the potato famine of the 1840s and exploring the repercussions of the Irish Catholic diaspora in America, Boston Globe staff writer Dezell concludes that Irish Americans flourish on contradictions. She first examines the phenomenon of "Eiresatz: a sentimental slur of imagined memories, fine feeling, and faux Irish talismans and traditions" that includes everything from the stock Irishman of the stage ("Sambo with a shillelagh") and the beer companies' preoccupation with drunken Irishmen to the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an all-male society that bans gays and lesbians from the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City. Dezell voices contempt for the Father O'Malleys and Flanagans of Hollywood, admiringly recounts the adventures of the San Patricios--the Irish battalion that deserted the American army during the Mexican War to fight on the side of Mexican Catholics--and examines what she casts as the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. She observes the evolution of the American Irish into "CWASPs"--"Catholic--or Celtic--White Anglo-Saxon Protestants"--and traces Irish feminism from the IRA's women's auxiliary, Cumann na mBam, to Mother Jones, Margaret Sanger and Dorothy Day. Dezell also investigates the prevalence of alcoholism among the Irish, and their often combative relationship with African-Americans. Astutely deconstructing images and experiences of the Irish in this country, Dezell will have readers shaking their heads in dismay one moment and laughing uncontrollably the next.
- Review in Publisher's Weekly (Publishers Weekly.com)
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