Ever have your life blown open by a few words on NPR? It happened yesterday, on St. Paddy’s Day, as my some-would-say negligible 1/16th Irish reared up on a 500-mile drive home to Iowa – a land where the Irish are few and far between. I was leaving Michigan, where I had spent the weekend with lots of Irish kin and kind. “One thing that maybe is not as common of a stereotype about the Irish but is certainly, in my experience, a defining characteristic, and that is: We don’t put up with inauthenticity much. ‘Be real‘ is a refrain, I think, of the Irish American community. So, perhaps we have a tendency to both admit our sins, and be offended by the stereotypes based…
Tagged: Alice McDermott, authenticity, ginger, green beer, inauthenticity, Irish, lawyer, real, Scritti Politti, St. Patrick's Day