#BlogTour ‘The 32:An Anthology Of Irish Working Class Voices’ Edited by Paul McVeigh

About the book…

‘The 32’ is a celebration of working-class voices from the island of Ireland. Edited by award-winning novelist Paul McVeigh, this intimate and illuminating collection features memoir and essays from established and emerging Irish voices including Kevin Barry, Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, Lisa McInerney, Lyra McKee and many more.

Too often, working-class writers find that the hurdles they come up against are higher and harder to leap over than those faced by writers from more affluent backgrounds. As in Common People – an anthology of working-class writers edited by Kit de Waal and the inspiration behind this collection – The 32 sees writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.

Without these working-class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives or role models for working-class readers and writers, literature will be poorer. We will all be poorer.

My thanks to publishers, Unbound, and blog tour organiser, Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for my invite and gifted review copy of ‘The 32′ which is available in paperback and e-book from 8th July.

A companion book, of sorts, to Unbound’s ‘Common People’ (which I can absolutely highly recommend) ‘The 32’ is very specifically called ‘an’ anthology, not ‘the’ anthology, allowing additions to be made and for other voices to join the throng of enclosed writers, singers, performance artists, activists and politicians. They are all collated by Paul McVeigh and Rachael Kerr and provide not only a platform for 16, previously un published writers, but also those who may have that platform but not spoken out on this topic before.

As he succinctly nails in his introduction,Paul McViegh shows that there is an expectation,and a definition,  of what ‘working class’ means without recourse to asking those who have this as their lived experience if this is their reality.

As a working class person from Wales, who has grown up throwing trip letters in bins rather than take them home to my parents, wore hand me down clothes, remembers my parents not eating so that we could,only a house phone from the age of 14 and no access to a car (too poor to drive) I can relate to the feelings expressed so vividly here. We live in social housing, paying rent which costs more than a mortgage because my husband and I have sporadic credit histories.

My father was the most educated (not on paper) person that I have ever met, but he failed the 11 plus so that was that. My mother brought me and my brothers up as my father worked, her education curtailed by my arrival. He was one of 8, she one of 9. The lives they lived through formed them, he lived recklessly leaving only good memories whilst she saved every penny to build herself a castle so that no one could ever return her to the child bathing in her siblings bath water, in front of a fire (in the 1960’s).

I can never forget the humiliation of being asked in assembly, as a school wide question, by the head, who has a bath multiple times a week, counting down to one. I was the only one who raised my hand, and , being an honest child, thought everyone else did the same. It never occurred that only being able to afford the heating to go on once a week was common to us alone. My husband grew up with an outside toilet, no glass in the windows, coats for blankets and spent nights praying his siblings wouldn’t wet the bed again. We grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. Our children, aged 31-11 have all experienced the hardship and the hunger which drives us not only to work hard to exceed the expectations of others, but also to supersede the history of their family. Our kids are told to bath and shower, leave food on their plates and so forth as to us, this is luxury.

So when I was offered the chance to read this book, I jumped at to see if there was a commonality, a thread through which I could feel kinship with others who deal with the continuing subjugation, appropriation and misunderstanding of what constitutes a working class voice whilst amplifying this authentic reality.

And it was writ large on every single page.

The anthology could not have come at a better time, when the gap between rich and poor, privilege and poverty is stretched beyond imagining, widened by the events of last year and this. It’s a drive to build others up, as Kerry Hudson says, ‘send the elevator back down’.

We know just how hard the road has been, deal daily with the guilt of being able to enjoy our achievements whilst acknowledging our backgrounds. It’s a protection mechanism, the way we guard ourselves against this sitaution of disconnection, otherness which is often replicated without a sense of understanding. You can see it in various aspects of the media , which is why it is so important that the gamut of people who gave their works to ‘The 32′ crosses disciplines, media platforms, forms and fiction. It is so very important to acknowledge your roots in order to understand where you are reaching to and yet, making peace with this notion is not easy.

There is still that assumption that you should ‘know your place’, ‘stay in your lane’ , however, the one thing that comes through loud and clear, is that these people have been stoked with fire in their fingers and passion in their guts.

They want accessibility and appreciation of lived experience to be understood, from what is seen a s limiter, to be challenged and changed into activism-Rosaleen McDonagh is a traveller, disabled, female and Irish, her reality and what she has been through drives her to be active in a way that many people who come from privilege will never understand. She reaches her hand out for others to be pulled up, and to illuminate so that I think those reading will , maybe, just maybe, get that if you have a voice, to not use it to amplify others is a waste. Such a waste.

My hopes are two-fold-that it reaches as wide an audience as possible in showing the unique, Irish working class experience is a journey, not a destination, and that it encourages other writers to be sought out, followed and championed.

Actually, make that 3 fold-I sincerely hope for more writing like this, across the British Isles. Because, if we only listen to pre dominant voices, all we will here are representations of ourselves reflected through the lens of white, male privilege. Handed out freely, never really understood, capable of giving so much more than it takes.

I love books like these because seeing what I have felt, the conflict, the confusion, the guilt and the anger which is unique to having to fight for every step forward is so often tamped down by those ‘above’ you. The more we speak, the more we read, the more we tell our children what it is like, the more we learn. And that, to me, could never be a bad thing.

The contributers include-

Rick O’Shea Roddy Doyle Erin Lindsay Claire Allan Kevin Barry Dermot Bolger Kate Burns June Caldwell Martin Doyle

Paul Dunne Trudie Gorman Marc Gregg Angela Higgins Jason Hynes Riley Johnstone Erin Lindsay Dave Lordan

Alison Martin Rosaleen McDonagh Linda McGrory Lyra McKee Lisa McInerney Danielle McLaughlin Eoin McNamee

Maurice Neill Michael Nolan Abby Oliveira Stephen O’Reilly Michael Pierse   Senator Lynn Ruane

Theresa Ryder Jim Ward Elaine Cawley Weintraub

*I have tried to link to every possible contributor where I could, apologies for those I could not find a contact for*

About the editor…

Born in Belfast, I studied theatre at University and co-founded a theatre company to write and direct plays. After producing a number of plays I moved to London to write comedy shows before turning to prose.

My short fiction has appeared in literary journals and anthologies published in the UK and USA and been translated into Spanish, Polish and Turkish. My stories have also been on BBC Radio 3,4, & 5. In 2017 I was shortlisted for Irish Short Story of the Year.

My debut novel ‘‘The Good Son‘​ was been chosen for World Book Night 2017. It was City Reads 2016 book for Brighton and was the winner of The Polari First Novel Prize. It was shortlisted for The Guardian’s ‘Not The Booker’​ Prize 2015, shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and finalist for The People’s Book Prize. It was voted Best of Year 2015 in Elle Magazine, the Irish Independent, Wales Arts Review, The Reading Agency, Top Beach Read in The Pool and a Gransnet Christmas Read.

‘‘The Good Son’‘ has been translated into French (where is was shortlisted for the Prix de Roman Cezam), German and Hungarian and Russia

Links-http://paulmcveighwriter.com/

Twitter @RandomTTours @paul_mc_veigh @unbounders