Voices from the Margins : Gender and the Everyday in Women’s Pre- and Post-Agreement Troubles Short Fiction

Abstract

Voices from the Margins explores the particular emphasis that women writers of Troubles short fiction have placed on gender and the everyday, two areas which have often been relegated to the margins of the ‘official story’ about the Northern Irish conflict and peace process. Women’s Troubles short stories integrate the domestic plot into the larger historical framework of political violence, reconceptualizing and blurring the boundaries between the private and the public and capturing the many ways in which the conflict has impacted and been disruptive of the private space. This book shows how these women have rewritten the ‘official story’ with narratives that foreground the personal histories of the Troubles over a public History which has largely been based on the division between the pro-state and anti-state nationalisms in Northern Ireland.