“Irish English had to do with personal identity, and you can’t get rid of that”. An Interview with Juan José Delaney

Abstract

In this interview, Irish-Argentine writer Juan José Delaney reflects upon his writing. His own cultural affiliation with both the Irish and the Argentinian culture come to the fore in his answers. Thus, when asked about his background he replies: “I have always been nourished by both the Argentinian and the Irish cultures”. Juan José Delaney was born in Buenos Aires in 1954. He is a fiction writer and essayist and he holds the chair in Twentieth Century Argentinean Literature at the Universidad del Salvador (Buenos Aires), where he also coordinates the Irish Studies Program. As a fiction writer, he has published the collections Papeles del Desierto (1974-2004), and Tréboles del Sur (1994), which has been recently reedited (2014). His novel, Moira Sullivan (1999), like many of his short stories, depicts the life of the Irish in Argentina, a topic that he returns to in his most recent nouvelle, Memoria de Theophilus Flynn (2012), which connects Waterford with Buenos Aires. He is also the author of a dramatic comedy entitled La viuda de O’Malley and the biography Marco Denevi y la sacra ceremonia de la escritura (2006). During the course of the interview he discusses cultural and linguistic assimilation issues that were conspicuous in the context of Irish emigration to Argentina.