The Kane story
My Irish history is one that I am always still discovering and returning to; it has been a lighthouse in the murkiness of understanding who and what I am, the places and people I come from. Mine is a muddied identity, made up of hundreds of stories I could never hope to capture or know, just like the mosaic of histories that make up so many Americans.
Growing up, my Irishness was an unspoken thread woven into the creativity and expressiveness, just as much as into the discipline and reverence of my mother. She is an Irish Catholic mother in both name and spirit, just like her own before her, and her grandmother before that. Our line of strong and resilient women began with Catherine Curren, who married Patrick Kane after both their families moved to America in the 1900s. The two had daughters: first Mary Joan Kane, then Virginia Kane—my maternal grandmother and great-aunt, respectively, both born in the 1930's during the Great Depression. Catherine passed away from pneumonia while the girls were young, and in time Patrick remarried Lucy Burke, who continued to raise the girls with the same fierce Irish soul, encouraging them to pursue a college education despite it being unusual for girls at the time. Both forces of nature, Mary Joan and Virginia—Noni and Nina, to me—became my examples of womanhood from my earliest memory.
Mary Joan married an Italian man—to the shock and dismay of the Kane family, of course, with Lucy and Patrick even refusing to attend the wedding at first—but the deeply engrained prejudices toward outsiders held by so many immigrant communities at the time began to fade when they eventually fell in love with both their Italian son-in-law, Anthony Joseph Abbruzzese (changed to Russ, as to avoid prejudice and sound more American), and the blended family this union had created.
Mary Joan and Anthony raised my mother, Theresa, with the best that both of their histories could offer them, but it has grown only more apparent to me as I grow older how the line of Irish women that gives way through her to me has been essential in contributing to how we move through the world, how we worship and love, and how we create and appreciate art.
My mother raised me and my four brothers to be strong-willed but contemplative and empathetic people. I can't help but think it was the Irish moral compass and determination instilled in us through time by these Irish women. My mother, a painter and art educator her whole life, valued creativity, education, and artistic expression above all else, aside from maybe familial love and care, making sure to hone them in us—myself a writer with a Master's degree in English. I can't help but think it is the Irish inclination for literature and art that lives on in us.
It has been one of the greatest pleasures to learn and immerse myself in Irish-American culture in my young adulthood, bringing me closer to a people and a place that feels like home even if I wasn't born there. Working in Irish art spaces in the U.S. after grad school only opened my eyes further to the lasting ways that the nations are connected, and the unyielding open arms that the community holds towards people like me, who might not know exactly what their place is in all of it, but feel certain that it must be vital.