Irish awakening

When I was growing up, I had a combative relationship with the one grandparent who was present in my life, my maternal grandmother.  (The other three grandparents died quite young.)  I don’t really know why, but we didn’t get along until after I’d gotten through the worst of the hormonal years.  Maybe it’s because we were too alike in some ways.  As I got older I grew to appreciate her rock-solidness, her work ethic, and her devotion to family.  She was like a second mother to me and my eleven siblings.  Her parents immigrated to New Jersey from Poland. She was born in Ramapo, NY, and later moved to Chicago and married another Pole.  Although she Americanized her last name (eliminating lots of consecutive consonants), she continued to speak Polish with my mother and made Polish sausage that was second to none.  The other half of my genetic make-up is Irish, and I have an unmistakably Irish first and last name.  It’s a bit ironic when people joke about it when they hear my name (“Gee, are you Irish?!?”) because I have always identified more with my Polish heritage.  I always point out that I am half-Polish when the subject comes up. 

I first had a kind of awakening of the Irish spirit in me when I read Pat O’Shea’s The Hounds of the Morriganas an adult.  I had read other contemporary Irish writers (Frank McCourt, Nuala O’Faolain, Betty Smith) and saw traits in some of their characters that I recognized in the male members of my family, but really, theirs were just good books in a long list of good books I’d read.   The Hounds of the Morrigan, on the other hand, stood out as magical, and it opened a window on to a cultural past I wanted to be connected to.  This Ireland was a mysterious place that had some innocence—no famines, no sectarian violence, just two utterly charming children setting out on a quest to save the world they knew from the wicked tripartite goddess Morrigan and the evil serpent Olc-Glas.  It was easy to get totally absorbed in it, and I remember laughing out loud in places.  An especially hilarious passage describes an encounter between Bridget and Pidge, the two young protagonists, and a reluctant watch-frog. This is a book that stays on my “keep forever” shelf. 

Have you stumbled on any books that unexpectedly struck a chord with you and your cultural identity? Or, to probe a little deeper, with your spirituality?