In my novel, Painting Through the Dark, 21-year-old Ashling O’Leary leaves Ireland for the U.S. in 1982 with a backpack, a three-month visa and a heart full of hope. She doesn’t go to New York or Boston, but deliberately heads west, to get as far away as she can. She’s not seeking out a community like the one she left, but the opposite. She craves new experiences, a whole new world. That new world is in the West.
My own journey as an immigrant mirrors Ashling’s. I also left Ireland at 21, seeking freedom of mind, freedom to imagine a new future. After a year in New York, I felt a pull westward. When I landed in California, I felt, like Ashling, that I was where I needed to be.
In San Francisco, I enrolled in acting classes at the American Conservatory Theater. I heard of a theater group at the United Irish Cultural Center out by foggy Ocean Beach. The building, with its massive brick walls, stained glass windows and dark interior, was a mix between a church and a bar. It was built by Irish contractors to re-create the Ireland they had left behind. It was a monument to the past.
I toggled between two worlds. We did theater in a backroom at the Irish center, and sometimes upstairs in the ballroom. It was a welcoming space and a valuable training ground for me as an actor and director. I was accepted into the graduate directing program across the bay at UC Berkeley. One evening, during intermission of a show I was directing at the center, I crossed through the bar area to head for the bathroom. All of the men in my cast were lined up at the counter with pints of beer and shots of whiskey, making the most of the 15-minute break. I approached them, knees turned to jelly; most of them were considerably older than I was. I asked as nicely as I could if they could please not drink during a show. They served me the usual plámás about a drink or two actually helping their performance, boosting their energy and confidence. I said this wasn’t the case, that the drink just made them think it. I felt like the upstart newcomer, but I needed my actors to know they couldn’t drink on the job.
The rest of San Francisco was moving into the future, with its liberal attitudes, thriving gay culture and open-armed welcome for artists. Some older members of the Irish community were still steeped in the culture and politics of Ireland of the 1950s. Many of the Irish bars felt like going back in time. They were there to provide comfort and reassurance that everything would stay the same, that the homeland would not be forgotten.
Shortly after her arrival, Ashling is on the bus when a stooped Chinese woman hobbles aboard and propels herself into the seat opposite. “The old woman pulled a newspaper from her canvas shopping bag and bent her wrinkled face over the Chinese characters. Ashling wondered how long she had been in the United States and if she felt at home here — if she missed living in a country where everyone looked like her and spoke her language. She wondered how she herself would feel if she stayed on. Would she be torn between the comfort of spending her life among her own people, and the wrench of leaving her native land for a place such as America? Would it come to feel like a splintering, or a grand expansion? Or both?”
This emotional push-pull might be the fate of the refugee, the asylum-seeker, the immigrant, especially those who travel to the West in search of new frontiers — the ones who don’t burrow in and create a facsimile of the life they left behind. They are coming from far, far away, from more established and conservative societies in the East, where they are already known and related to people, and everything is familiar. They sometimes cross oceans, then travel across the vast continent, over the majestic mountain ranges. And then they reach the West: a landscape of the possible.
And then they reach the West: a landscape of the possible.
I have lived in the Western U.S. now for decades. I still feel a lovely sense of familiarity when I hear an Irish accent. I’m closely connected to my family and friends in Ireland. But I can’t just hop on a plane and be “home” in a few hours. My mother died in 2008 while I was on a plane leaving Ireland and heading back to the U.S. after a three-week visit to Ireland. My husband gave me the news of her death when I landed in Portland, Oregon, exhausted after a lengthy flight with several layovers. My brother, who lives in Boston, was already back in Dublin. The distance from where I stood felt unfathomable.
Yet I am also deeply connected to my adoptive home and my American family and friends. If I were to answer Ashling’s conundrum, “Would it come to feel like a splintering, or a grand expansion? Or both?” I would say yes, yes, and yes.
The losses live in my heart. The gains live there, too. They keep me on my toes, navigating the spaces in between.
Gemma Whelan is a director, author and educator. She is the founding artistic director of Wilde Irish Productions (San Francisco Bay Area), and of Corrib Theatre (Portland, Oregon). Her novels are Fiona: Stolen Child and Painting Through the Dark. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
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