Ms. Hen reviews Hereafter The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara

 

Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara

Vona Groarke

New York University Press

2022

Ms. Hen learned about this book, and decided to read it because it's about an Irish immigrant that came to the United States in the 1880s, and that's around the time that Ms. Hen's great-grandparents came to America. It's a woman's story, and it's about a woman who was ordinary, not someone famous or rich, simply someone who did the best she could to get by.

This is a nonfiction book written by Ellen O'Hara's great-granddaughter. She investigates her great-grandmother's life by finding records in New York of when she arrived, when she got married, and her transit records going back and forth to Ireland. The author includes quotes from people about this time period, and the documents where she found evidence of her great-grandmother's life.

Ellen O'Hara arrived in New York, and worked as a servant, one of the only occupations available to Irish women at that time. She saved money, and sent it home to her family. She got married to John Grady, and she had two children, but he disappeared. He left, but she fabricated a story was that he died in a subway accident, which was what Ellen told her family so she would not have the shame of a husband who left her.

She takes her children back to Ireland to live with her parents, because she had no one to help her in New York, and she had to work. She works, and saves every penny, and eventually opens a boarding house for Irish men. She brings her children back to New York twelve years later. She is proud of her boarding house, and she takes care of the young men who stay with her.

This is not the typical book that Ms. Hen reads. It's told through scenes that the author imagines that her great-grandmother experiences, and some poetry, and records and advertisements. Ms. Hen thinks this is a lovely way to write a book, and to try to imagine how these people lived over one hundred years ago.

A lot of prejudice existed against Irish people back then, the English thought they were dirty, and uneducated, but the young women sent money home to their families, and raised Ireland up, and the author proposed that this is what helped Ireland survive, and flourish. Things have changed, and nobody is prejudiced against Irish people now in this country, and everyone seems to have forgotten how things used to be.

Today is Saint Patrick's Day, and Ms. Hen is celebrating quietly, thinking about how much the world has changed, and how it still has a long way to go, and she's grateful that her ancestors came here, and she has had opportunities that America has given her, and she has given herself.