AM I IRISH YET?
After 35 years in Ireland the blow-in finally flips
'Plastic Paddy?'
How DARE you!
I am 100per cent Irish. Leprechaun. GOLD.
I always wanted to be ‘Irish’.
Stone walls, green fields, miraculous medals, Tayto crisps, red lemonade – they all just felt like ‘me’.
But being bought up in London as second generation Irish during the 70s/80s things just weren’t that simple.
In England we were the ‘bombing Irish’ mistrusted and abused. In Ireland we were the English cousins – the subjects of hurtful, teasing antipathy.
All through my childhood and teens, I longed for Irishness. But no matter how many of the songs I sang or poems I learned – I was only ever a plastic paddy, a fake. Ireland was the teenage crush who didn’t love me back and, like an infatuated teen, I clung on. In my twenties the craving was so strong I left behind a successful life in London to move here in search of the answer to who I was.
35 years later, two Irish children, an Irish husband and a career as an ‘Irish writer’ I am still asking 'Am I Irish Yet?'
Am I Irish Yet is currently touring UK and Ireland
MORAG PRUNTY
STORYTELLER
Morag Prunty was editor of Just Seventeen where where she helped 'discover' Take That! In the early 2000's she turned to writing fiction and, under the name, Kate Kerrigan has had ten novels published. Her work has been translated into over 25 languages and her Ellis Island Trilogy was a New York Times bestseller.
Kate has a loyal following of readers in the U.K, Ireland and the U.S.
Am I Irish Yet? covers her journey growing up as 'The Bombing Irish' in 80s London through a stint in Dublin editing Irish Tatler and finally to her idyll of not-quite-Irish-enough-lady-novelist.
You can read more about Kate's books on her website.
'Anyone who is not living where they born will relate to this.'
'The story stayed with me for days.'
Brilliant. So well-crafted, a most accomplished performer. Funny, honest and poignant. The audience loved it.
MARY KENNY, COLUMNIST, IRISH INDEPENDENT
