A love letter and a plea to the Divided States of America
To whom it should concern (everyone):
Hey, it’s me. It has been a while since I visited. I had such plans to hang out in 2020 (didn’t we all?) I thought it might be best to catch up on a few things.
I write to you as a yankophile. I grew up on a generous diet of American culture. Films, TV shows, comic books and music all permeated my brain from the start. I gleefully soaked up the pretty looking people with perfect teeth and listened intently to the wide and entertaining variation of accents. I never cared for country music much but it is very popular in Ireland (Garth Brooks has a nearly messiah level status on the Emerald Isle. Oddly enough the messiah himself is less popular than ever in a country previously characterised by its austere version of Catholicism).
America seemed busy, expansive, multi-faceted, exciting and way less imperialistic than our colonial next-door-neighbours (to be fair America has a rather scary reproduction of the social and racial inequalities inherent in the UK, my wide eyes just didn’t want to take that in). Ireland’s ties to the new world are strong and many. I have Aunts and Uncles that moved there in the ’50s and countless cousins dotted all over the states. Emigration from the land of Riverdance is as much part of our narrative as immigration into the land of…