Colleen Condon (b. 1970) describes her upbringing in an Irish-American family in Charleston. Her family came to the States from County Cork during the time of the Famine, first landing in a northern city before coming to Charleston, which she remarks is most likely due to the similarities between Charleston and County Cork. Her great-great-grandfather started Condon’s department store in Charleston in 1899, which was family owned until closing in 1984. She discusses what it was like growing up in a large but very close-knit family with lots of ties to the community. She feels that issues of prejudice and discrimination against Irish Catholics in particular is something that has decreased through the generations, and that the Irish Catholics have become more integrated with the wider community as the years have passed, that Irish identity has “mesh[e]d really well” with Southern identity in Charleston. As to the difference between Charleston and other southern cities, she feels that the Irish community and sense of Irish identity is more prominent in Charleston than it is in places such as Atlanta or Charlotte. Part of her interview also includes her experience as a lesbian in an Irish-Catholic family, and how she has begun to try to separate her Irish identity from Catholicism because of the difficulties she has faced. Colleen and her wife were the first couple in the state of South Carolina to be granted a marriage license as a same-sex couple, after a long legal battle.
Eimer Kernan discusses her experience as an Irish immigrant. She is the youngest of five siblings from Dublin, and first came to the States in the late seventies on a J1 visa, then later came to live here full-time with her American husband. She has worked as a clinician, researcher, teacher, and consultant for thirty years. She comments on the difference in diversity between Ireland and the States, stating that Ireland is very homogenous, especially when compared to the States, and discusses how she “dials” herself back into Irish culture whenever she returns to Ireland. On religion, she remarks that she found the Catholic church restricting from an early age, so she feels that Catholicism, and religion in general, is not a part of her identity, though it did play a role in her upbringing in Ireland. She speaks specifically to her experience as a woman with a career, and of the difficulties that women face in trying to balance work and family. Above all, she maintains her identity as “Irish-Irish,” and considers herself “a bicoastal dual citizen.”
