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"A
wonderful book that should be read by all Irish people and by anyone
thinking of moving to Ireland. Written in the words of foreign women
living in Ireland, the material is simply presented to the reader
to draw their own conclusions, hence the "author" calls herself,
quite correctly, the "editor". Because each interview is a separate
work, the book should be perfect for reading piecemeal, but I found
I couldn't put it down. There is something irresistibly voyeuristic
about having someone's life and feeling summarised and feelings
summarised on three or four pages, and as an Irish person I loved
the chance to "see ourselves as others see us". I was constantly
nodding, thinking "yes, we really are like that," even if I didn't
like what was being said."
"A reader" from Ireland
living in Tokyo. Customer review posted on Amazon.co.uk:
"This book coherently presents the intimate life stories of 61 women. Each one
is as good as any short story. The women come across as honest and
forthright.... Knight says in the introduction that she has endeavoured
to maintain the individual voice of each of the women. She has done
this so well that at the end of each interview you can't help but
wish there was phone number or an address -- just so you could respond
to their experience, hopes and dreams."
Rose
Costello, Sunday Business Post
"If this book occasionally highlights the more negative sides of Irish life,
it may also, in itself, be an agent of change. Susan Knight's achievement
is to have given these women a voice with which to communicate to
the established Ireland and help to make it a more pluralist, positive
place."
Roberta
Gray, Metro Eireann
"Where the Grass is Greener: Voices of Immigrant Women in Ireland...
is simultaneously a careful mosaic of outsider experience, a unique
document of the changing morals, fortunes, temper and pace of Ireland
today.... Whether we have become more racist, or were always racist,
but never had the chance to exercise our racism, remains arguable.
All of Knight's interviewees sit self-consciously at society's edges,
however, never quite accepted. Unsurprising, it might be said, when
a recent Amnesty International survey found less than one third
of respondents would welcome Travellers, asylum seekers or members
of ethnic minorities into their communities."
Pol
O Conghaile, Irish Independent
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