Jim Rogers knew he was Irish by age 5. “My mother never let me forget. She pinned green shamrocks to my shirt when I went off to school,” he says. That was St. Patrick’s Day—maybe a superficial way to recognize one’s heritage, but one that stands out.
Rogers’ new book, Irish-American Autobiography: The Divided Hearts of Athletes, Priests, Pilgrims and More, looks to memoirs of comic actor Jackie Gleason, boxer John L. Sullivan and actress Barbara Mullen to get at what it really means to be Irish-American, from Joe Biden’s chattiness and Irish pubs to Catholic guilt and “roots” pilgrimages back home.
“It was internalized,” Rogers says of Irishness. “That doesn’t mean it disappeared.”
Look for Jim Rogers’s book Irish-American Autobiography: The Divided Hearts of Athletes, Priests, Pilgrims and More on Amazon and at the website here.
