Author Biography
Sonja Tiernan is the Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies and Co- Director of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at University of Otago.
Author Biography
Sonja Tiernan is the Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies and Co- Director of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at University of Otago.
Description
Thirty-three inspiring speeches by women of Ireland from the nineteenth century to the present. Rallying cries for trade union action, denunciations of apartheid, calls for independence, unionism, peace and gender equality: Irish women have eloquently expressed their demands from platforms in America to podiums at the United Nations. This anthology showcases the stirring contributions that Irish women have made both to modern Irish society and to global development.
Arm yourselves with weapons to fight your nation's cause. Arm your souls with noble and free ideas.
Countess Markievicz
There is no place in society for us, the ordinary "peasants" of Northern Ireland.
Bernadette Devlin
Travellers are not just statistics. We are people with faces, names and voices
Nan Joyce
In Kerry you're better off to be a greyhound than a woman, at least that's what I was told Mamo McDonald
Any woman voting for divorce is like a turkey voting for Christmas.
Alice Glenn
The Ireland I will be representing is a new Ireland, open, tolerant, inclusive.
Mary Robinson
'The voices that have been silent are the ones we must hear. When the women quoted here broke their silence, they expanded our view of what it is to be human because they represent half the race. We may not always agree with them but without them we’ll have only half the story.' - Read Olivia O’Leary’s foreword to Irish Women’s Speeches: Voices That Rocked The System here.
'The record of Irish women’s speeches provides an inspiring account of Irish women whose words continue to shake people out of apathy and enthuse new generations. It is a record of women who, as Mary Robinson noted in her presidential acceptance speech, “instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system.”' - Sonja Tiernan, The Irish Times, November 2021. Read the full article here.
'The balanced, alternative view of history found in Eamon Cleary Chair of Irish Studies Professor Sonja Tiernan’s new book Irish Women’s Speeches: Voices that rocked the system has resonated with readers in Ireland, with the book already reprinted four times.' - University of Otago, December 2021. Read the full article here.
'My single hope for the year ahead is that when we talk of women’s contributions, past and present, the adjectives ‘unseen’, ‘unheard’, or ‘unsung’ will no longer be needed to describe them.' - Clodagh Finn, Irish Examiner, December 2021. Read the full review here.