From the Sin-e Cafe to the Black Hills Notes on The New Irish

Eamonn Wall arrived in the United States in the 1980s as part of a wave of young, educated immigrants who became known as the "New Irish." In this book he comments on his own experiences and those of his generation, who identify as much with contemporary ethnic and immigrant America as they do with the long-settled Irish American community.
Wall’s starting point is the now-closed Sin-é Café in New York’s East Village, which was a hangout in the early 1990s for expatriate Irish musicians, actors, and writers. He comments on the poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs of both the New Irish and Americans of Irish heritage, locating them within a literary and historical context. But this is also a deeply personal book in which Wall wrestles with his own identity as an Irishman living in America, raising his children as Americans and learning to love the American landscape, from the streets of Manhattan to the western hills of Nebraska.