Quote of the Day (John Steinbeck, on His “Very Strong’ Strain of Irish Blood)

“I am half Irish, the rest of my blood being watered down with German and Massachusetts English. But Irish blood doesn't water down very well; the strain must be very strong.”—American novelist and Nobel Literature laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968), “I Go Back to Ireland,” Collier’s, Jan. 31, 1953, collected in Americaand Americans and Selected Nonfiction, edited by Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson (2002)

I don’t think I can wish my readers a “happy” St. Patrick’s Day—there will surely be no marching or celebrating this year. But in the 1840s, when they first came to this country, they didn’t have much to cheer about, either, what with a famine that turned into a plague in their home country and bigotry that awaited them when they came to these shores in absolute desperation.

How did they endure it? Faith, humor, sheer will—and uniting together, as tight as can be, when they were rejected  by native Americans who could have acted more tolerantly and generously but didn’t.

I worry that the current Coronavirus crisis will not only continue to split Americans into warring groups, but that it may even fracture the solidarity of groups yearning to break through, as the Irish were, after long years, finally able to manage. We must not let this happen. 

Let’s hope that the ethnic solidarity celebrated by Steinbeck remains just as strong not only within Irish-American, but among those who have taken their place as emerging groups in America. It may be now, as it was then, the only to survive.