White birch, red hawthorn : a memoir / Nora Murphy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murphy, Nora, author.

Contributor:

Edwin B. Cole Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Murphy, Nora--Family.

Murphy, Nora.

Indians of North America--Land tenure--Minnesota.

Indians of North America.

Eviction--Minnesota.

Eviction.

Eviction--Ireland.

Indians of North America--Land tenure.

Ireland.

Minnesota.

Physical Description:

xvi, 179 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2017]

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"-- Provided by publisher.

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

Acknowledgments

Resources and Further Reading.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edwin B. Cole Memorial Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Murphy, Nora, author. White birch, red hawthorn

ISBN:

9781517901325

1517901324

OCLC:

962232285