A review by sharonleavy
Republic of Shame: Stories from Ireland's Institutions for 'Fallen Women by Caelainn Hogan

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

 "Once I started working on this book, and mentioning it to people, it came to seem that everyone I knew had a friend, an aunt, a cousin, a classmate or a neighbour who had been sent to one of the institutions, or who had been born in one of them. This was not a subculture; this was a mainstream set of experiences, hidden in plain sight."


This was a difficult read that I took in chunks over several months. It's probably one of the hardest things I've read in my almost 34 years of reading. 

Saying that - I think it's a necessary one, especially if you are someone who doesn't know too much about Ireland's habit of locking women away in State-supported institutions to work their fingers to the bone while their children were taken from them. 

I genuinely think this should be on the school curriculum (instead of religion, perhaps - but that's a conversation for another day). 

Caelainn Hogan has done a tremendous amount of research to produce this book in a resepectful way. 

"If my mother had a hundred pounds, she could have bought me" will haunt me. 

My mother in law is from Tuam, and remembers being told to stay away from the children who came from the home in Tuam. People crossed the road to avoid "them lot". Children, innocent children, their only crime being born out of wedlock in Holy Catholic Ireland. 

I had to put the book down and walk away from it several times, but I screamed internally at the chapter about the Tuam closures where a Fianna Fáil TD argued AGAINST the closure because it would have had a negative financial impact on the area, and a doctor said Tuam "provides facilities for the Medical School at UCG" by way of medical experiments. 

I feel like shame is carried around by every Irish Catholic or formerly Catholic woman from the day we're old enough to realise what shame is. Ashamed of our bodies, ashamed of our wants or needs, ashamed of our choices, ashamed of our behaviour, ashamed of our emotions, ashamed of our voices, ashamed of our "sins", ashamed of ourselves. It's a rotten legacy. 

None of this will make you want to read this book, but I think everyone needs to. And think about Direct Provision while you're reading it and wondering how people let this happen.