Research Catalog

Title

White birch, red hawthorn : a memoir / Nora Murphy.

Author

Murphy, Nora

Publication

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 179 pages : illustrations; 21 cm

Summary

""This is conquered land." The Dakota woman's words, spoken at a community meeting in St. Paul, struck Nora Murphy forcefully. Her own Irish great-great grandparents, fleeing the potato famine, had laid claim to 160 acres in a virgin maple grove in Minnesota. That her dispossessed ancestors' homestead, The Maples, was built upon another, far more brutal dispossession is the hard truth underlying White Birch, Red Hawthorn, a memoir of Murphy's search for the deeper connections between this contested land and the communities who call it home. In twelve essays, each dedicated to a tree significant to Minnesota, Murphy tells the story of the grove that, long before the Irish arrived, was home to three Native tribes: the Dakota, Ojibwe, and Ho-Chunk. She notes devastating strategies employed by the U.S. government to wrest the land from the tribes, but also revisits iconic American tales that subtly continue to promote this displacement--the Thanksgiving story, the Paul Bunyan myth, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. Murphy travels to Ireland to search out another narrative long hidden--that of her great-great-grandmother's transformative journey from North Tipperary to The Maples. In retrieving these stories, White Birch, Red Hawthorn uncovers lingering wounds of the past--and the possibility that, through connection to this suffering, healing can follow. The next step is simple, Murphy tells us: listen"--

Subject

• Murphy, Nora > Family
• Indians of North America > Land tenure > Minnesota
• Eviction > Minnesota
• Eviction > Ireland
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural Heritage
• HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
• SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies
• Minnesota > Authors

Genre/Form

Essays.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-179).

Contents

Machine generated contents note: -- Contents -- Stranded -- Old Stories -- The Cedars -- The Crab Apple -- The Pines -- American Chestnut -- The Elm -- Conquest in the Maples -- The Maples -- Wild Rice -- White Birch -- Potato -- Coming Home -- Red Hawthorn -- The Chokecherry -- The Crab Apple -- Acknowledgments -- Resources and Further Reading.

Call Number

JFD 17-3776

ISBN

• 9781517901325
• 1517901324

LCCN

2016059305

OCLC

962232285

Author

Murphy, Nora, author.

Title

White birch, red hawthorn : a memoir / Nora Murphy.

Publisher

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2017]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-179).

Other Form:

Online version: Murphy, Nora, author. White birch, red hawthorn Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017 9781452954202 (DLC) 2017015738

Research Call Number

JFD 17-3776