New Collection: Famine Pots: The Choctaw-Irish Gift Exchange, 1847-Present Edited by LeAnne Howe & Padraig Kirwan. Cork University Press

Famine Pots: The Choctaw-Irish Gift
Exchange, 1847-Present
Edited by LeAnne Howe and Padraig Kirwan
The remarkable story of the money sent by the Choctaw
to the Irish in 1847 is one that is often told and remembered by people in both
nations. This gift was sent to the Irish from the Choctaw at the height of the
Great Irish Famine, just sixteen years after the Choctaw began their march on
the Trail of Tears toward the areas west of the Mississippi River.
Famine Pots commemorates an unlikely moment of
trans-Indigenous exchange, a legacy of empathy across differences. Choctaw and
Irish voices weave a celebratory dialogue through poetry and song, scholarship
and personal essay, evoking the contingencies and wrestling with the
contradictions of the original Choctaw gift to the Irish in 1847, marking the
improbable resiliency of a mutual regard that remains ongoing. —Chadwick Allen,
author of Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies
Famine Pots honours that extraordinary gift and
provides further context about and consideration of this powerful symbol of
cross-cultural synergy through a collection of essays and poems that speak
volumes of the empathy and connectivity between the two communities. As well as
signalling patterns of movement and exchange, this study of the gift exchange
invites reflection on processes of cultural formation within Choctaw and Irish
society alike, and sheds light on long-time concerns surrounding spiritual and
social identities. This volume aims to facilitate a fuller understanding of the
historical complexities that surrounded migration and movement in the colonial
world, which in turn will help lead to a more constructive consideration of the
ways in which Irish and Native American Studies might be drawn together today.
LeAnne Howe is the Eidson Distinguished Professor of
American Literature in English at the University of Georgia. Padraig Kirwan is
Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Comparative Literature,
Goldsmiths, University of London
September 2020 | 9781782054290| €26 £24 |
paperback | 228 x 153 mm | 260 pages
https://www.corkuniversitypress.com/Famine-Pots-The-Choctaw-p/9781782054290.htm