Cé Leis Tú? Queering Irish migrant literature

Irish lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) writers have almost all had personal experience of migration, and register the profound effect of those migrant experiences in their literary writing. Yet, to date, these voices have been silent in dominant accounts of the Irish diaspora. Focusing on queer subjects in migrant literature by women writers, this essay sets out to examine the links between LGBT and diasporic identities, and to explore the ways in which kinship and migrant affinities unsettle the fixities of family and place in the culture. Reading across the diasporic literary space carved out by Kate O'Brien, Emma Donoghue, and Shani Mootoo, the essay shows how their work resists, rejects, and questions the dominant culture, whether ‘at home’ or in the diaspora. Queer kinship, which intentionally appropriates relationships and values from the bio/genetic sphere but introduces elements of choice and agency to these connections, provides a useful framework within which we might read this literature. By the end of the twentieth century, queer kinship networks were in evidence across the Irish diaspora. In Ireland, ensuing transnational exchanges had a profound impact on grassroots social activism and theory. For instance, I argue that feminist theory and literature, often transmitted along axes of queer kinship, was key to the shaping of the women's and LGBT movements in Ireland. While we have yet to see the wide-scale effect of emerging immigrant writers on existing cultural forms in Ireland, it is only a matter of time before LGBT writers from immigrant communities begin to have an impact on the culture. While anticipating such work, we must continue to question how the space of Irish literature, and indeed of the Irish diaspora, has been constituted – and resisted – thus far.