What does it mean to be a Northern Irish writer? Decades after the end of the Troubles, it remains a difficult question to answer.
From The Picture of Dorian Gray to Ulysses, Dracula to Waiting for Godot, the island of Ireland has produced some of the most important works in the English literary canon. Not only do these works continue to capture international attention, but the legacy of Irish literature still echoes in the island today. These calls bounce off the emerald hills and create generation after generation of powerful poets, playwrights, and authors. Irish author Paul Lynch won the Man Booker Prize in 2024 for Prophet Song, beating out fellow Irishman Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting. Between the celebration of these novels and the popularity of authors like Sally Rooney, many people are writing about the power of the Irish literary scene today.
However, in the conversation around Irish literature, we often forget the equally powerful Northern Irish literary scene. This scene is not only producing authors like Anna Burns (Winner of the 2018 Booker Prize), Louise Kennedy, and Maggie O’Farrell but also has its own tradition of storytelling. Northern Irish literature is still developing as authors today explore ideas like colonialism, religion, and civil war in a Northern Irish context. In this tradition, the question of identity is important. How can we celebrate this subset of Ireland’s literature, with its own cultural and historical background, without labeling it as Irish, British—or sometimes equally problematic—Northern Irish?
Today’s questions concerning what exactly we should call the people living in Northern Ireland are undoubtedly tied to the decades-long conflict commonly referred to as “the Troubles,” the “violent sectarian conflict from about 1968 to 1998 in Northern Ireland between the overwhelmingly Protestant unionists (loyalists), who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans), who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the republic of Ireland.”[i] The violence might have ended, but the effects of the war and the question of identity still loom over the just under two million people who call the region home.
The violence might have ended, but the effects of the war and the question of identity still loom over the just under two million people who call Northern Ireland home.
In 2021, for the first time since the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey began in 1998, more people felt themselves to be Irish than British in Northern Ireland.[ii] Identification as Northern Irish was the second most popular identification, with British following as third. However, as the number of people identifying as Northern Irish increases, it is important to understand the connotations of Northern Irish vs. Irish identification. In a 2019 article, researchers Kevin McNicholl, Clifford Stevenson, and John Garry explore the complexities of Northern Irish self-identification. They write that Northern Irish identity has power through its refusal to disclose an identity (Republican vs Unionist). But they also see the complications of “Northern Irishness” at the same time, writing, “There is also evidence of ingroup projection (the ‘projection’ by individuals of perceived ingroup characteristics onto the superordinate identity, such that the prototypical Northern Irish identifiers is more likely to be considered a Protestant.”[iii] Although Northern Irishness might seem like a “middle ground,” in reality the people who feel comfortable claiming this identity are often a part of the more powerful Protestant community. This lack of definition of “Northern Irish” as an identifier is both its strength—allowing individuals to escape from the confines of binary identity—and its downfall. Researchers Natasha Bingham and Christopher Duffy argue that the minority position of Catholic and Nationalist individuals in Northern Ireland makes a purely Irish identity feel more important for individuals to hold onto.[iv] Of course, as the demographics of how Northern Ireland identifies change, understanding the effects of these identifiers grows more crucial.
As the violence in Northern Ireland has settled down, a new generation of authors is exploring the effects of English colonialism and the Troubles in literature. We see this in works like Anna Burns’s 2018 novel Milkman. Set in an unnamed city in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, a young girl is stalked by a paramilitary officer who refuses to leave her alone. As rumors circulate, the community judges the girl for his attention. Through Milkman, Burns shows us how extreme partisanship and internal surveillance hurt the community and those deemed outsiders. Burns’s experience in Belfast is essential to the story—in an interview for the Booker Prize, Burns explains: “I grew up in a place that was rife with violence, distrust and paranoia, and peopled by individuals trying to navigate and survive in that world as best as they could.”[v]
We see this relationship between everyday life and the violence of civil war not only in Milkman but also in Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses. In Trespasses, a Catholic teacher falls in love with a married Protestant lawyer defending falsely accused Catholic clients. As the main character, Cushla, navigates this relationship, she also navigates her divided community. Both authors use the violence and fear present during the Troubles to show a broad audience of readers the effects of a fractured community due to colonial subjection. Although violence is less common today, this division still exists, as we see in the way authors identify themselves.
For authors Burns or Kennedy, the complications of nationality mean identifying with a city rather than a nation. In their biographies, both authors identify as being from Belfast instead of labeling themselves as Irish, British, or Northern Irish. This may seem like a loophole in the identification issue, but it confines the connection between their work and its geographical context to the smaller scale of a city versus a larger regional perspective. Other authors choose to embrace a broader Irishness, refusing to segregate Northern Irish works from Irish literature. While these labels may appear inconsequential to literature, the reality is that they segregate each author based on their city of origin or preferred identifier. The body of literature produced in connection with Northern Irish authors becomes fractured through these labels, which dilute the perceived strength of the movement.
The body of literature produced in connection with Northern Irish authors becomes fractured through these labels, which dilute the perceived strength of the movement.
The result is the lack of recognition of Northern Irish works in the conversation about all contemporary Irish works. Although the question of identity has no easy answer, the impacts of overspecifying or generalizing identification make it hard to see the growth and impact of literary arts in the region today. This recognition is important because of the unique history and cultural context in Northern Ireland that separates it from the rest of Ireland. Different experiences, emotions, reactions, and realities have influenced works in the Northern Irish context, compared to works from southern Ireland. However, the label of Northern Irish is a label that can be understood to feed into the colonial state.
There is no easy solution, but to better understand the complexity of the work coming out of the North today, the easiest thing to do is to read Northern Irish work. Regardless of the way the work is identified, reading works like Milkman, by Anna Burns; Reading in the Dark, by Seamus Deane; or North, by Seamus Heaney, all help the reader see what makes Northern Irish work unique, and why we need to search for it among all the potential categories it could inhabit.
University of Oklahoma
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