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From pardon and protest: memoirs from the margins
102
Book Reviews
and journalistic categorizations of lesbian and ‘‘minority’’ artists, in a story of display and spectacularization in the upper echelons of the art world. Pieces like Cheang’s defy categorization—they are wonderfully undisciplined—and their inclusion alongside more conventional academic or autobiographical essays is one of the innovations of Talking Visions. Read in productive tension with one another, the volume’s constitutive elements work together to create the most ‘‘plurilogical’’ feminist publication readers will have likely ever encountered. Jenny Burman CULTURE OF CITIES PROJECT AT YORK UNIVERSITY, 440 BLOOR STREET W., 2ND FLOOR, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA M5S 1X5 doi 10.1016/S0277-5395(02)00361-8
FROM PARDON AND PROTEST: MEMOIRS FROM THE MARGINS, by Una O’Higgins O’Malley, 209 pp. Arlen House, Galway 2002; E31.95 Hardback, E19 paperback. My first thought on reading this was, margins? You must be joking. Una O’Higgins O’Malley has been at the centre of political power in Ireland all her life. Government ministers, ambassadors, even presidents were part of Una’s circle growing up, and her mother’s second marriage, to a wealthy solicitor, brought even more privilege; a house on 17 acres of woodland in Dublin’s most exclusive location, a private convent boarding school, a chauffeur-driven car, a coming-out. Una qualified as a solicitor, but gave it up when in 1952, she married a surgeon, Eoin O’Malley. They reared a family in a succession of lovely houses in and around the capital, and always had paid domestic help. My niggling annoyance at all this comfort was completely indefensible. After all, I wouldn’t feel like this about a man of the same generation. And would any man have thanked, by name and short, respectful description, the paid domestic workers who had helped him to rear his family, as is done in this book? (Would many women?) In any case, my resentment quickly yielded to admiration for the energy of this extraordinary woman. It was her strong sense of social responsibility, grounded in religious belief, which spurred Una to activism. Her father, was Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins. His forgiveness of his assassins as he lay dying in 1927 was a powerful influence on the daughter who had no memory of him. It also repre-
sented, for many Irish nationalists, a line drawn under the ferocious hostilities of the 1922 Civil War, which pitted nationalist against nationalist, and in O’Higgins’ case, best friend against best friend. From the age of five, Una was praying for the strength to forgive her father’s assassins, and she dedicated a large part of her adult life to the promotion of forgiveness and reconciliation. She was part-founder, in the 1970s, of the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation, where people of all classes, from both nationalist and unionist backgrounds, came together. Glencree wound down eventually, but much of the ground work for the peace process was carried out in settings like these, on both sides of the Irish border. During the 1981 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, she supported four of the five demands, unlike other anti-IRA groups who refused to discuss the demands at all. She also took part in protests against, among other things, children’s prisons, Travellers’ living conditions and poor housing. One might not always agree with her—her view that ‘loyalist savagery’ is ‘mainly a response to the IRA’ is controversial to say the least—but one has to admire her respect for the other point of view, even when it is extreme. Like many religious people of her generation, she has a profound respect for conviction, and only contempt for the complacent. Una O’Higgins O’Malley also reared six children during the frequent absences of a very busy husband. All the work she did was voluntary and unpaid, though she doesn’t point this out. Feminists are, quite understandably, uncomfortable with women’s voluntary work, but how many reforms would have happened had women—and men—not given freely of their time, risking, as O’Higgins O’Malley did, rebuff and ridicule to reach out to people of other backgrounds and other cultures? How many people who care about injustice today are barred from activism by punitive workloads, even in the so-called caring professions? (How many of us one-track workhorses will be as interesting as Una O’Higgins O’Malley when we are in our seventies? Not many, I fear.) This book is more of a ‘life-and-times’ than a ‘life’; the ‘margins’ of the title conveys modest understatement rather than victimhood. Una O’Higgins O’Malley has nothing to be modest about, but this doesn’t mean that I would re-title her book; it is an indication of the kind of woman she is. There isn’t a self-serving sentence in this extraordinary memoir. Caitriona Clear Department of History, NUI, Galway, Ireland doi 10.1016/S0277-5395(02)00362-X
Book Reviews
and journalistic categorizations of lesbian and ‘‘minority’’ artists, in a story of display and spectacularization in the upper echelons of the art world. Pieces like Cheang’s defy categorization—they are wonderfully undisciplined—and their inclusion alongside more conventional academic or autobiographical essays is one of the innovations of Talking Visions. Read in productive tension with one another, the volume’s constitutive elements work together to create the most ‘‘plurilogical’’ feminist publication readers will have likely ever encountered. Jenny Burman CULTURE OF CITIES PROJECT AT YORK UNIVERSITY, 440 BLOOR STREET W., 2ND FLOOR, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA M5S 1X5 doi 10.1016/S0277-5395(02)00361-8
FROM PARDON AND PROTEST: MEMOIRS FROM THE MARGINS, by Una O’Higgins O’Malley, 209 pp. Arlen House, Galway 2002; E31.95 Hardback, E19 paperback. My first thought on reading this was, margins? You must be joking. Una O’Higgins O’Malley has been at the centre of political power in Ireland all her life. Government ministers, ambassadors, even presidents were part of Una’s circle growing up, and her mother’s second marriage, to a wealthy solicitor, brought even more privilege; a house on 17 acres of woodland in Dublin’s most exclusive location, a private convent boarding school, a chauffeur-driven car, a coming-out. Una qualified as a solicitor, but gave it up when in 1952, she married a surgeon, Eoin O’Malley. They reared a family in a succession of lovely houses in and around the capital, and always had paid domestic help. My niggling annoyance at all this comfort was completely indefensible. After all, I wouldn’t feel like this about a man of the same generation. And would any man have thanked, by name and short, respectful description, the paid domestic workers who had helped him to rear his family, as is done in this book? (Would many women?) In any case, my resentment quickly yielded to admiration for the energy of this extraordinary woman. It was her strong sense of social responsibility, grounded in religious belief, which spurred Una to activism. Her father, was Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins. His forgiveness of his assassins as he lay dying in 1927 was a powerful influence on the daughter who had no memory of him. It also repre-
sented, for many Irish nationalists, a line drawn under the ferocious hostilities of the 1922 Civil War, which pitted nationalist against nationalist, and in O’Higgins’ case, best friend against best friend. From the age of five, Una was praying for the strength to forgive her father’s assassins, and she dedicated a large part of her adult life to the promotion of forgiveness and reconciliation. She was part-founder, in the 1970s, of the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation, where people of all classes, from both nationalist and unionist backgrounds, came together. Glencree wound down eventually, but much of the ground work for the peace process was carried out in settings like these, on both sides of the Irish border. During the 1981 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, she supported four of the five demands, unlike other anti-IRA groups who refused to discuss the demands at all. She also took part in protests against, among other things, children’s prisons, Travellers’ living conditions and poor housing. One might not always agree with her—her view that ‘loyalist savagery’ is ‘mainly a response to the IRA’ is controversial to say the least—but one has to admire her respect for the other point of view, even when it is extreme. Like many religious people of her generation, she has a profound respect for conviction, and only contempt for the complacent. Una O’Higgins O’Malley also reared six children during the frequent absences of a very busy husband. All the work she did was voluntary and unpaid, though she doesn’t point this out. Feminists are, quite understandably, uncomfortable with women’s voluntary work, but how many reforms would have happened had women—and men—not given freely of their time, risking, as O’Higgins O’Malley did, rebuff and ridicule to reach out to people of other backgrounds and other cultures? How many people who care about injustice today are barred from activism by punitive workloads, even in the so-called caring professions? (How many of us one-track workhorses will be as interesting as Una O’Higgins O’Malley when we are in our seventies? Not many, I fear.) This book is more of a ‘life-and-times’ than a ‘life’; the ‘margins’ of the title conveys modest understatement rather than victimhood. Una O’Higgins O’Malley has nothing to be modest about, but this doesn’t mean that I would re-title her book; it is an indication of the kind of woman she is. There isn’t a self-serving sentence in this extraordinary memoir. Caitriona Clear Department of History, NUI, Galway, Ireland doi 10.1016/S0277-5395(02)00362-X