Research Catalog
White birch, red hawthorn : a memoir
- Title
- White birch, red hawthorn : a memoir / Nora Murphy.
- Author
- Murphy, Nora
- Publication
- Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2017]
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFD 17-3776 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- xvi, 179 pages : illustrations; 21 cm
- Summary
- ""This is conquered land." The Dakota woman's words, spoken at a community meeting in St. Paul, struck Nora Murphy forcefully. Her own Irish great-great grandparents, fleeing the potato famine, had laid claim to 160 acres in a virgin maple grove in Minnesota. That her dispossessed ancestors' homestead, The Maples, was built upon another, far more brutal dispossession is the hard truth underlying White Birch, Red Hawthorn, a memoir of Murphy's search for the deeper connections between this contested land and the communities who call it home. In twelve essays, each dedicated to a tree significant to Minnesota, Murphy tells the story of the grove that, long before the Irish arrived, was home to three Native tribes: the Dakota, Ojibwe, and Ho-Chunk. She notes devastating strategies employed by the U.S. government to wrest the land from the tribes, but also revisits iconic American tales that subtly continue to promote this displacement--the Thanksgiving story, the Paul Bunyan myth, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. Murphy travels to Ireland to search out another narrative long hidden--that of her great-great-grandmother's transformative journey from North Tipperary to The Maples. In retrieving these stories, White Birch, Red Hawthorn uncovers lingering wounds of the past--and the possibility that, through connection to this suffering, healing can follow. The next step is simple, Murphy tells us: listen"--
- Subjects
- Minnesota > Authors
- Eviction > Minnesota
- Indians of North America > Land tenure > Minnesota
- Essays
- Murphy, Nora > Family
- Eviction > Ireland
- BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural Heritage
- HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
- SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies
- Genre/Form
- Essays.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-179).
- Contents
- Machine generated contents note: -- Contents -- Stranded -- Old Stories -- The Cedars -- The Crab Apple -- The Pines -- American Chestnut -- The Elm -- Conquest in the Maples -- The Maples -- Wild Rice -- White Birch -- Potato -- Coming Home -- Red Hawthorn -- The Chokecherry -- The Crab Apple -- Acknowledgments -- Resources and Further Reading.
- Call Number
- JFD 17-3776
- ISBN
- 9781517901325
- 1517901324
- LCCN
- 2016059305
- OCLC
- 962232285
- Author
- Murphy, Nora, author.
- Title
- White birch, red hawthorn : a memoir / Nora Murphy.
- Publisher
- Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2017]
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-179).
- Other Form:
- Online version: Murphy, Nora, author. White birch, red hawthorn Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017 9781452954202 (DLC) 2017015738
- Research Call Number
- JFD 17-3776