Brian Moore's The Luck of Ginger Coffey: Transforming Irish Emigrant Identity in Montreal

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Brian Moore's The Luck of Ginger Coffey: Transforming Irish Emigrant Identity in Montreal
Abstract
The author points out that Brian Moore's 1960 novel, The Luck of Ginger Coffey, ostensibly deals with the difficulties of an Irish immigrant attempting to settle with his wife and daughter in the 1950s Montreal. As such, the novel would seem to depict the predictable challenges of many exiles who must somehow align previous and present identities and attempt to transpose a self shaped and defined by home to a new place where it can take root and grow. The author argues, however, that before Ginger Coffey can become a successful immigrant, he must face the double challenge of belatedly undertaking a process of self-formation and do so in an alien place. He concludes that despite false starts, active gestures of avoidance, emotional equivocations and instinctive self-deceptions, Moore brings Ginger Coffey to a point where he has shed the carapace of delusions that have hitherto prevented genuine self-awareness so as to allow him to engage successfully with the immigrant experience.
Publication
The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies
Volume
Vol. 35
Issue
no. 2
Pages
67-72
Date
Fall 2009
Language
en
Citation
Kenneally, Michael. “Brian Moore’s The Luck of Ginger Coffey: Transforming Irish Emigrant Identity in Montreal.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies Vol. 35, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 67–72.
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