Ireland Is Changing Mother is the latest collection from Rita Ann Higgins: provocative and heart-warming poems of high jinx, jittery grief and telling social comment by a gutsy, anarchic chronicler of the lives of the Irish dispossessed, before as well as since the demise of the Celtic tiger.

MAY 2014. The Irish public woke to the horrific discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of most 800 babies in the ‘Angels’ Plot’ of Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home. What followed would rock the last vestiges of Catholic Ireland, enrage an increasingly secularised nation, and lead to a Commission of Inquiry. In The Adoption Machine, Paul Jude Redmond, Chairperson of the Coalition of Mother and Baby Homes Survivors, who himself was born in the Castlepollard Home, candidly reveals the shocking history of one of the worst abuses of Church power since the foundation of the Irish State. From Bessboro, Castlepollard, and Sean Ross Abbey to St. Patrick’s and Tuam, a dark shadow was cast by the collusion between Church and State in the systematic repression of women and the wilful neglect of illegitimate babies, resulting in the deaths of thousands. It was Paul’s exhaustive research that widened the global media’s attention to all the homes and revealed Tuam as just the tip of the iceberg of the horrors that lay beneath. He further reveals the vast profits generated by selling babies to wealthy adoptive parents, and details how infants were volunteered to a pharmaceutical company for drug trials without the consent of their natural mothers. Interwoven throughout is Paul’s poignant and deeply personal journey of discovery as he attempts to find his own natural mother. The Adoption Machine exposes this dark history of Ireland’s shameful and secret past, and the efforts to bring it into the light. It is a history from which there is no turning away.

"Mother Ireland" includes seven essays seamlessly woven into an autobiographical tapestry. In her lyrical, sensuous voice, O'Brien describes growing up in rural County Clare, from her days in a convent school to her first kiss to her eventual migration to England. Weaving her own personal history with the history of Ireland, she effortlessly melds local customs and ancient lore with the fascinating people and events that shaped he young life. The result is a colorful and timeless narrative that perfectly captures the heart and soul of this harshly beautiful country.

Before the economic boom of the 1990s, Ireland was known as a nation of emigrants. The past fifteen years, however, have seen the transformation of Ireland from a country of net emigration to one of net immigration, on a scale and at a pace unprecedented in comparative context. As a result, Irish society has become more diverse in terms of nationality, language, ethnicity and religious affiliation; and these changes are now clearly reflected in the composition of both primary and secondary schools, presenting these with challenges as well as opportunities. Despite the increased number of ethnically-diverse immigrant children and young people in the Ireland, currently there is a paucity of information about aspects of their lives in Ireland. This book is aimed at contributing to this gap in knowledge. This edited collection will be of interest to researchers in the fields of migration studies, childhood studies, education studies, human geography, sociology, applied social studies, social work, health studies and psychology. It will also be a useful resource to educators, social workers, youth workers and community members working with (or preparing to work with) children with immigrant and ethnic minority backgrounds in Ireland.

Motherhood has been used as a political, social and cultural symbol in Ireland. In fact, the role of mother was institutionalised in the 1937 Irish Constitution. This book brings together creative and critical writings on motherhood in Ireland in an attempt to understand its complexity.

"Writing Modern Ireland' examines the complex literary manifestations of Ireland and Irishness from the turn of the twentieth century to very recently. Together with examinations of the nation, the collected essays consider Irish identities that may be sexual, racial, regional, gendered, disabled and able-bodied, traumatized and in the process of healing. Identity, like literary texts, is a constant process of making and remaking, revision and publication. This collection takes up the question of what it means to write modern Ireland, evoking the many resonances that name will carry: a mythic place, a land controlled from elsewhere, a nation hoped for and achieved, a nation denied and resisted, an island divided, an idea soaked in fantasies and dreams, a homeland abandoned in searches for brighter futures, a land of opportunity, a people who are many people, and a place defined by writers who both empower and challenge it. W. B. Yeats looms large, as he does in modern Irish writing, and in commemoration of his sesquicentennial year. Building on a themed issue of The South Carolina Review, the present volume is expanded and rededicated by Catherine E. Paul (Clemson University). It features critical essays by Ronald Schuchard on Yeats, Michael Sidnell on Beckett, Liam Harte on Sebastian Barry, Jefferson Holdridge on contemporary Irish poets, and Thomas Dillon Redshaw on the revival of the Cuala Press (illustrated), together with a host of significant scholarship and criticism by 14 additional international experts from the USA, UK, Belgium, France, and (of course) Ireland."-- p. [4] of cover.

This study analyzes the role of gender in Irish cultural change from the 1890s to the present, exploring literature, the relationships between gender and national identities, and the recognized major political and cultural movements of the twentieth century. It includes discussion of film, television and, popular music, as well as diverse literary texts by authors such as Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, and Boland.