56 pages • 1 hour read
We Are the Brennans
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Background
Authorial Context: Tracey Lange
Tracey Lange grew up in an Irish American family in 1980s and 1990s New York, like the Brennans in the novel. Like Mickey and Maura Brennan, Lange’s parents raised her and her siblings to take pride in and connect with their Irish heritage. In the Acknowledgements section of the novel, Lange thanks her father for sharing his stories about his upbringing and ancestry with her and her family. Her father’s stories about life in Ireland also partly inspired the point-of-view literary device by exploring Mickey’s life. Louis O’Hare’s background as an Irish immigrant gives authenticity and credibility to Mickey’s point of view as an Irish immigrant. It shows the experience Lange’s family has with Irish and Irish American culture.
The support Lange’s family gave her inspired the theme of The Importance of Family Unity in the novel, and the Brennans’ immense loyalty to each other mirrors that of Lange’s family. She thanks her parents and brother for helping her with research and ideas and supporting her throughout the writing process. She also thanks her husband and sons for inspiring and believing in her. Likewise, the Brennans support each other through all their hardships in the novel and go to enormous lengths to help each other. Lange’s familial inspirations also help ground the novel in reality, humanize a family with many tragic flaws, and make life-changing and often reckless decisions.
Lange incorporated several aspects of her personal life into the novel’s motifs and literary devices. She describes her kitchen as “the heart of our home and the perfect place to write about family” (274). Similarly, the narrator states that the Brennans’ kitchen table “had been the center of their universe for many years. Everything else—school, friends, jobs—had revolved around this space” (104). Lange, thus, establishes her family’s kitchen as an inspiration for the motif of the Brennans’ kitchen as the emotional cornerstone of the family and the novel.
Sociocultural Context: Irish Catholic Families and Traditions
The Roman Catholic Church had been a significant force within the Irish diaspora for centuries. Even after the Protestant Reformation and the British occupation of Ireland, Ireland has remained spiritually and culturally Roman Catholic. Though Ireland has become more secular in recent decades, Catholicism still plays a vital role in Irish and Irish American families and traditions.
Maura Brennan, especially, comes from a strict Irish Catholic family who, according to the narrator, “believed in the literal letter of Catholic law” (39). She has internalized many of the teachings and traditions with which she was raised and, thus, holds traditional views on sexuality. Sunday recalls that after her first period, her mother did not talk to her about it and only gave her a church pamphlet “that explained nothing and warned of the impure thoughts she might start to experience” (26). Because sex was so heavily stigmatized and demonized in many traditional Irish Catholic families, sex education was often insufficient. This appears with Maura Brennan’s handling of her children’s sex education, especially her daughter Sunday’s. As a result, Sunday gets her information about her body and sexuality from her less religious older cousin Grail.
Societal image and shame also play central roles in the Irish Catholic families portrayed in the novel. Shame causes Maura to internalize her displeasure and hurt following Mickey’s affair with Lynn Walsh. It also drives her to shame her daughter following Billy’s attack and convince her to hide it and the miscarriage from her family and Kale. She fears ruin and scandal, as she knows how horribly it can destroy families and turn their communities against them, especially when those scandals come from adultery, reckless behavior, and even the appearance of lewd conduct.
Maura Brennan’s traditional Irish Catholic beliefs also appear in her insistence that her children have church weddings. Church weddings are significant in Irish Catholic families, mainly because, until recently, the church usually only allowed its members to marry in a church. Church weddings are also jovial, sacred events meant to celebrate the holy bond of marriage and unite the church community. Maura puts diligent work into planning Denny and Theresa’s church wedding, and Sunday and Kale know that a church wedding is what their mother would expect for them as well. Their plan to elope without a church wedding is a radical decision that would not be considered appropriate by people like Maura.
Many Irish families historically have had large families primarily due to the church’s condemnation of birth control and other contraceptives. They have also traditionally stigmatized both premarital sex and remarriage after divorce, the latter of which the Catholic Church and many other Christian sects regard as adultery. These beliefs appear in the novel with the collective shunning of Clare Brennan by her parents after she became pregnant with Grail out of wedlock by a Protestant man and a similar shunning of Maura’s sister by their family after she married a divorced man. This stigmatization also destroys the possibility that Mickey and Lynn could have a future together.
Historical Context: 20th-Century Irish Immigration to the United States
Though Irish immigration to the United States was not as massive in the 20th century as it was in the 19th century following the Potato Famine of 1845, Irish immigrants still made up a significant percentage of immigrants entering the United States in the 20th century. During the Troubles, a sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland between the predominantly Catholic Republicans and the mainly Protestant Unionists from 1969 to 1996, many Northern Irish people sought to escape the violence by moving south to the Republic of Ireland or the United States for greater economic opportunities.
In the novel, Mickey Brennan and Frank and Lynn Walsh all emigrated from Belfast, in large part, to escape the paramilitary violence. Mickey had gotten involved with the IRA and had the IRA and the Orangemen after him, leading to him leaving for the United States. He started his own construction company there and built a prosperous life for his family. Frank and Lynn Walsh pursued the same prosperity, but Frank’s alcoholism prevented them from obtaining it.
Furthermore, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Republic of Ireland went through an economic recession. Also, it was still significantly poorer than other Western European countries at the time. As a result, many people from the Republic of Ireland immigrated to the United States for better economic prospects. In the novel, Maura comes from Donegal in the Republic of Ireland to the United States to give herself and her future family a better life.
Many Irish people who had been shunned for going against traditions also immigrated to the United States, which was more socially progressive in the 20th century. This is present in the novel, in which the Brennans’ aunt Clare decides to go with Mickey to the United States after becoming pregnant outside of marriage by a married Protestant man. The United States offers her a clean slate and the opportunity to give her daughter Grail a good life.
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