Daughters of Maeve: 50 Irish Women Who Changed The World

An Exclusive Interview with New York Author Gina Sigillito

By Seán McCarthy, NUJ

Summer 2008 has brought quite a few surprises so far. Hillary Clinton will not now be President, unless of course Obama Barak chokes on a walnut between now and Election Day, and a surprise John McCain scandal puts Hillary back in the sprint for the White House.

Another surprise, and not a good one, has been the sad news of Edward Kennedy's diagnosis with a malignant brain tumour. God Bless Ted, and we're all rooting for his recovery.

But there's one other surprise so far this Summer 2008 that just popped out at me from the pages of a new book called Daughters of Maeve (Citadel Press - Amazon.com) pertained to the legendary singer Billie Holiday. I didn't know Billie Holiday was Irish, did you?

When you think about it, and when you read the book everyone is suddenly talking about, you might just find that us Irishmen may not know as much about our women as we think we do.

Thankfully, renowned New York author Gina Sigillito has agreed to sit down with me, and to flesh her vast and intriguing knowledge of Irish women out for me, in her new book.

Indeed, reading about the importance and significance of Irish women throughout history is, in itself, a fascinating thing, for I always knew Sinead O'Connor would bounce back. Talent is talent ... is talent. And after all, she's a Celt!

In my reading the book Daughters of Maeve I am learning that, from ancient times to the present, many remarkable Irish women have made their mark in times of peace and war, both back home in Ireland and here in America.

But with their accomplishments largely ignored by the history books, these extraordinary women have fought for equality, struggled for independence, and met the challenge of nation building.

Courageous, passionate, creative, able to stand tall on the battlefield - and in the kitchen - their stories can inspire brave women everywhere, for these 'Daughters of Maeve' have achieved remarkable feats against incredible odds. Sinead O'Connor is a good example of a woman who has struggled all her life, but who has found a way to rise well above the struggle's grasp.

As you read each chapter in Daughters of Maeve you sort of enter an intimate world wherein you get to meet individual and very differing women such as patroness of Ireland Saint Brigid, pirate queen of Connacht Grace O'Malley, ancient warrior Queen Maeve, suffragist Clara Dillon Darrow, union leader Mother Jones, U.S. first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, singer/songwriter Sinead O'Connor, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, screen and stage beauty Maureen O'Hara, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, irish revolutionary Maud Gonne and umpteen other awe-inspiring Irish figures.

This indispensable reference book, so well researched and full of unknown facts and accounts promises to move, instruct, and empower readers to reach for their dreams as they stand on the shoulders of great Irish women. But ironically enough, it took a New York writer, Gina Sigillito, to bring all these wonderous historical facts to light, and to print, for everyone to now discover.

Sean McCarthy: Talk to me Gina about your own Irish background? Your surname Sigillito sounds Italian?

Gina Sigillito: My Dad is indeed Italian, and my mother's family hails from County Derry.
My Great Grand Father was a man by the name of Alexander McClintock, a protestant Irishman who headed to America directly from Derry in about 1790, through New Jersey actually.
He traveled west and then ended up in the Mid West where I later grew up, in Missouri.
He was originally a landowner in Derry City. Indeed, the first time I visited Ireland I was lucky enough to find some of our family's documents when I was in Belfast, and I actually found a letter that he had written when he was leaving Ireland.
As I said, he was a landowner, and because of that I was able to find documents and records of him. Many people did not own land at that time, and so it is very rare that any documentation exists for those who did not own land.
Alexander McClintock was well known in his day. He was protestant. Indeed, the letter that he wrote was such a rare document (1790) that I had to have a copy of it sent to me from Derry. The original still remains there in Ireland.

Sean: I have to ask then, what's your favourite County in Ireland?

Gina: That's a tough question Seán, because I love Ireland so much. I have traveled from Dublin all the way to Kerry with my family, and I have to say I fell in love with Kerry and think that County is just particularly beautiful, amazing. And even though there's a lot of tourism in Ireland these days, I really love the way that Ireland has kept the historical, the quaint and the ancient sights intact.
We stayed in Killarney and traveled around the Ring of Kerry. But it's hard for me to say which is my favourite County, because I do love Dublin.

Sean: So you miss the Kingdom of Kerry, yes?

Gina: Yes! It was pretty fabulous. We also traveled through Cork, which was beautiful too, and Cork City.

Sean: What is it about Irish history that has you so hooked on it over the years of your writing career to date?

Gina: When I was in college in the early nineties there were hardly any good Irish Studies programs. I think Harvard was the only Irish Studies program and even that was more focused on ancient Celtic studies.
My mother and father were always interested in Irish studies, literature and so on, and when I was a kid they would read to me the wonderful Irish mythologies.
Later in life, when I came to New York and became involved in the Irish Cultural Scene here, I noticed that very few women were being written into any of the cultural celebrations that were going on, or just any of the Irish history in New York. And I thought to myself "that cannot be!"
There would have to have been women involved in the journey through Irish history who were being overlooked completely!
So that really kind of got me started on a journey, and a search to find out more about the women's roles.
As I was doing that, I was also being asked to give speeches and write articles about how women were involved in Irish history, and that really brought me on this journey to write this book.

Sean: A long journey?

Gina: It has been about fifteen years of independent study to arrive at this book.

Sean: A fascinating read altogether Gina, your new book Daughters of Maeve recounts the lives and times of fifty Irish women who changed the World.
It's a in-depth look at some of Ireland's most prominent women figures over the centuries. What made you write this book, and how did you come to choose the 50 women featured in it?

Gina: Well, I had written a book about four years ago called 'The Wisdom of The Celts' and that really enabled me to write this book because 'The Wisdom of The Celts' received a lot of attention and nice reviews and it also sold really well, especially for such an esoteric subject matter.
For instance, when I was doing my research I was studying the life of the ancient Irish warrior Queen Maeve simply because she was such a huge part of Irish Mythology and Literature, and the incredible freedoms that Queen Maeve was afforded, and indeed the freedoms that Irish women in general were afforded before Saint Patrick came along.
Perhaps people don't realize that Irish women enjoyed an incredible sexual freedom, and they could own property, and they were on the battlefield and had all these 'real'' freedoms.
Then, ironically, when Saint Patrick came along, and the Middle Ages arrived, those freedoms all stopped for women. So, that knowledge really gave me the impetus to forge ahead and write this book.
Interestingly enough, there was a lot of controversy about whether Queen Maeve really existed or not and my point of view is that it really doesn't matter because she was and has remained such an incredible figure and so fearless and so independent that her myth and her story gave birth to all the women that came after her.
So I called the book 'Daughters of Maeve' and I started to choose the women I wanted in there. To answer the second part of your question Seán I did have women in mind that I just knew had to be in there like Bernadette Devlin or Rose Kennedy, women that are just 'so' iconic that there's no way that they couldn't be in there.
But then I also wanted to choose women that people may never have heard of, or that people outside the Tri-State area may not know of like Mary Brosnahan Sullivan who is a huge figure in New York City. She's champion of the homeless, and just an incredible woman, but people outside the New York City area may not have heard of her.
I actually got together with my editor when we were first conceiving this book, and we had questions such as "were there fifty Irish women who changed the world?" which is kind of an incredible question because we ended up having to narrow the list down!
I worked with my editor on that narrowing down. I wanted to do a kind of a note section for the book, but then I thought it would just get so unwieldy because what I really wanted to do was to choose women of different eras and also women who were the first in their field so to speak.
So for instance, picking women from literature of which you have such a plethora. So many Irish women writers! Also, women who were involved in the struggle for Irish Independence, and Union Leaders, and artistic figures like Sinead O'Connor.
I just wanted to take from every facet. I didn't want there to be fifty different stories either, and I wanted to have a narrative thread throughout my book that showed how each woman influenced the next generation. And there is a narrative to it, because no matter what the next generation, these fifty women all come from different backgrounds but they have a lot in common.
Sort of a dedication to social justice, a dedication to human rights. There are many similarities in a way.

Sean: With the musical stage hit The Pirate Queen, the more recent fantastical accounts of Grace O'Malley portrayed onstage are probably far removed from the true story of this remarkable woman. What does your book tell us about the one true Pirate Queen of Connaught?

Gina: Well, it is interesting that her story was made into a Broadway Musical. I was so fascinated about that. Grace O'Malley was actually a pirate queen who lived in the 16th Century and what is really fascinating about her is that she sort of came out of a vacuum.
Not only was she the first woman pirate, but she was also one of the few women to emerge in the Middle Ages who sort of came out of nowhere to break barriers.
It is said that Grace O'Malley led a small army of 200 men at one point and was an absolutely fierce leader in every way.
Another interesting fact about the Pirate Queen of Connaught was the fact that she lived at a time when the British were beginning to take over Irish land in spades, and she and her clan were able to ward off British rule in much of the land that they owned, which is amazing for the time because the British were in full force at the time.
My book Daughters of Maeve goes into her personal life as well as her adventures on the high seas.
She was also the first woman to stand up to Queen Elizabeth because she had inherited land from her husband and it was being taken away from her!
She actually stood up to Queen Elizabeth and said to her, you know, "This is my property, and these are my rights!" So Grace O'Malley really is an incredible woman.

Sean: Another fascinating woman is Sinead O'Connor who seems to have calmed down over the years and returned to her love of music and family of course. What do you think has been Sinead's most defining moment in music as an artist?

Gina: Sinead has always fascinated me because she came on the scene when I was still in high school and I just thought, " Who is this woman?" with an incredible voice.
I had bought her debut album 'The Lion & The Cobra' the first few weeks it came out. I was just so fascinated by her. She just sort of blazed up the charts then, from out of nowhere.
Funny, I just saw Sinead this past Fall at the Beacon and she gave an amazing performance for a show that was sold out.
Her voice is just so beautiful and she's an amazing performer. So people are still fascinated by her and I think her music still stands out.
She has a new CD out and all, but I don't think she ever recovered from that moment. It's a shame because she is just a glorious singer.
She was making points about the church that, whether you agree with them or not, came out later. She was making some points about child abuse and things that were going on in the church before people were really speaking out about it.
So she had that courage to do that and it backfired on her especially the way she presented her argument. I'm glad to see she's still out making music though.
Actually, when I had finished my piece on her as this book went to press she had been in retirement.
So I'm glad to see that she's still out there doing it.

Sean: Why do you think Sinead is so highly misinterpreted by, mostly, the American public?

Gina: Yeah, it's interesting. I was actually just talking to a friend of mine recently about that, because he went with me to see her in concert at the Beacon.
And it was really interesting to see women in the audience, young women that were just in college, mesmerized by her.
I don't know why she did what she did. She did explain why she did what she did, but I think that for some reason because she is so audacious and so outspoken, a lot of people still aren't into that with women, you know.
I think that is why they react to her in general. Unfortunately, because of that incident (1992 Saturday Night Live when she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II) her career kind of took a downward spiral, and her more outrageous antics got more press than her music ever did. That was the problem, I think. But it's great to see her back performing.

Sean: Why do you think that the accomplishments of so many incredible and influential Irish women have been ignored over the centuries?

Gina: That's interesting, and I wish I knew why. When I was writing this book, I myself learned so much, and I had myself been studying Irish history for some fifteen years.
As an example, take Mary Robinson, who became the first female President of Ireland when I was still in college.
I knew her in that role of President. Then, when I started studying her life I discovered what an incredible feminist she also was, pushing through some of the most progressive legislation in Ireland. I hadn't known that.
People that I was speaking to about writing this book, who were extremely learned individuals on Ireland and experts in the field of Irish history and Sociology were also asking the same question: Why isn't there a book that's kind of all-encompassing on the subject of Irish women?
There's a certain amount of sexism I'm sure behind it all, but to be honest with you, you really have to dig on some of these women to find out their histories and I did a lot of research in Ireland also and some of that research just never made it over to me here, from Ireland.
Even Irish American women, there are a lot of things that people don't know about the women I have in my book Daughters of Maeve and some of them are very well known women, like Jackie Kennedy.
She has Irish roots as well that rival her husband's and a lot of people don't know that either.
They know everything about Jackie Kennedy, her family and her accomplishments, but they didn't know that Irish part of her history. It's interesting, why Irish women have been left out of history books, but I'm hoping that my new book sort of helps out with that.

Sean McCarthy's interview with Gina Sigillito will be concluded in next week's paper.