This week: The rich history of Irish food; Remembering our community midwives; and the racial transformation of the Irish in America.

Irish Food History

Food - it's not just about filling your belly, it’s a window into our past, a record of how we’ve lived, worked, and celebrated through the ages.

A new book takes a deep dive into Ireland’s culinary history. From ancient feasts to modern innovations, the history of Irish food reveals so much about our changing culture, economy, and way of life. The book is called Irish Food History – A Companion, published by the Royal Irish Academy.

The co-editor, with Dorothy Cashman, is Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, Chef and Senior Lecturer in Culinary Arts at Technological University Dublin - who joins Myles in studio.

Click here to check out the book, which available to read and download online.

Remembering Our Community Midwives

In the early 20th century, long before hospital births became the norm, community midwives were the backbone of maternity care in Ireland. These women provided crucial, often life-saving care to mothers and babies, working in rural areas where access to doctors and hospitals was limited.

They travelled by foot or by bike, carrying their medical bags through all weather, and often stayed with families for days at a time. Their work was vital in a time when childbirth carried significant risks, and they became trusted and respected figures in their communities.

A new exhibition, Mary Anne Fanning: Remembering Our Community Midwives, is currently running at the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life in Castlebar. It celebrates the often-unsung contributions of community midwives to maternity care in Ireland in the early 20th century.

A project by the Irish Community Archive Network, the exhibition is researched and curated by Emma Laffey, a local historian and healthcare assistant, who joins Myles on the line from Galway.

Click here for more information on the exhibition.

Our guest Emma Laffey will be giving a public talk at the museum called A Life from a Midwife's Bag, this Saturday the 19th October at 2PM. Click here for more information on that talk.

Emma is the author of the publication An Bhean Ghlúine / Woman of the Knee, which you can read online here.

Race, Politics, and Irish America

We are right in the middle at the moment of a US Presidential election season which, not for the first time, has some odd Irish resonances.

Republican Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, for example, in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy describes himself as identifying with 'the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree'.

For her part, although, her heritage is unlikely to entice her to Ireland to research her genealogy, Kamala Harris is descended, through her Jamaican father, from a particularly enthusiastic Irish-born slave owner, Hamilton Brown.

In a recent book from Oxford University Press called Race, Politics, and Irish-America: A Gothic History, Professor Mary Burke of the University of Connecticut explores Irish-American identities (note the use of the plural). Myles speaks to Mary about how the history of Irish emigration, and its intersections with race, class, and culture, have shaped these identities.