It’s strangely moving to look at all the images too. One photo cracks me up—three people in unmistakably 1970s outfits, a woman licking an ice-cream cone with her tongue very far out, a man biting into a toasted cheese sandwich, and another man pouring water into his mouth from a jug he is holding over his head. It’s so that the aliens can see how we lick, bite, and drink. It is surely far-fetched to think that this will help in the great quest to communicate ourselves in any way. As Carl Sagan noted, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space.” The chances are tiny, and it hasn’t happened yet, as the Voyagers travel farther and farther away from their home planet. He continues, “But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” So you see, it’s essential to try.
Today, with these images I get to share with anyone who cares to look, I am asking the question: Do you understand me now? Here is what I’m trying to tell you. Back home in Ireland I’m trying so hard, I feel quite desperate. Look, I’ll show you. This is the slurry tank I grew up beside. It is big and navy blue and has the word HOWARD stamped on its rounded sides. Do you know now that often I and my five sisters would have to fly through the house closing all the windows because Howard was acting up? Okay, good. So next I need you to look at these people sitting on a wall, they’re watching a hurling game, okay? I didn’t play and I still feel awkward when taxi drivers start slagging me over a Cork team I know nothing about. After the hurling pitch we drive past the graveyard, that’s where my four grandparents are, I wish you could know them. My grandfather was a writer too but he didn’t get very far. I miss him, actually. This is my lunch, I ordered too much because I’m not doing well, got it? Here’s a terrible word joke where I collate quiche/capisce—I can’t help thinking of puns because that’s the way my brain works—are we clear? Here is me dancing alone in my room, I would never have shown you this a year ago, why now? I’m quite lonely today.
In the digital world, Twitter is the murky ocean full of snapping things, Facebook is the endless landmass, our own patches well trodden, the rest full of impassable borders. When we’re online, wandering around, we can run into any and all kinds of horror, but not on Instagram. It’s the sky, clear and pretty. We must reach up toward it, we can only hope to flit through it, feeling light-headed from all of those aspirational aches. It isn’t quite real, crammed with the pretty parts of life, the sunrises and laughing friends and roses in bloom. We censor the ugliness, you won’t often hear a cruel word there, or see a fight, or have to reckon with some hurt you’ve caused. I’m fine with that. The Golden Record does not include the sound of gunshots or screams of pain; there were no images of war or cruelty included, only of creativity and beauty. We presented what was best about us. Sanitized, yes, fully honest, no, but there is a value in that too. That is our best selves, the choices we wish to make, the future we long to have. This is me, and this is my home. There it is, in a picture. We cannot say we are lost, we need only look up into space, or down at our phones, to see where we need to go, to remind ourselves of the way home.
Sources and Acknowledgments
Most of this book is memoir and some of it is reported and researched, so I’ll list my sources here. There is a great piece in New York magazine, by Jesse Green, about the “other” Annie Moore, and how the confusion around Annie’s identity was solved. Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak was instrumental to this story and is a tireless “genie” and a wonderful caretaker of Annie’s legacy. On the other side of the Atlantic, back in Cobh, local historian Michael Martin provided me with valuable insight into what Annie was leaving behind. The Cobh Heritage Centre is full of wonderful resources for anyone hoping to find out more about emigration from Ireland.
Thanks also to my guide Brendan Murphy and all the staff of the Tenement Museum and to Barry Moreno, historian at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, for their kindness and incredible work at uncovering and preserving this crucial part of the American story. To learn more about the history of U.S. immigration laws, have a read of Kunal M. Parker’s Making Foreigners: Immigration and Citizenship Law in America, 1600–2000. To learn more about the time Frederick Douglass spent in Ireland, I read a wonderful account by Tom Chaffin, published in The New York Times in 2011, titled “Frederick Douglass’s Irish Liberty.” As mentioned in the essay, there is a fascinating paper by Lee Jenkins titled “Beyond the Pale: Frederick Douglass in Cork,” published in The Irish Review, that details and contextualizes the trip further. To read Douglass’s own account of that time in his life, which is stunning, read the second volume of his autobiography, titled My Bondage and My Freedom.
The writer Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s unparalleled coverage of Dylann Roof in GQ magazine helped me to better understand the legacy of white supremacy in the U.S. The Crossing is essential viewing for anyone trying to understand the migrant crisis; it’s an RTÉ documentary that follows the crew of the LÉ Samuel Beckett during their life-saving mission in the Mediterranean during the deadly summer of 2016.
I first heard of Friendship Park through some brilliant reporting done by Esther Yu Hsi Lee for ThinkProgress and Griselda San Martin for The New York Times. I am grateful to Dan Watman of Friends of Friendship Park for taking me there, and to Enrique Morones for his insight and his work with Border Angels. I highly recommend Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones, detailing how various governments attempt to contain populations and control access to resources and opportunities. Thank you to Liana and Vlad Ghica for allowing me into their lives. Huge gratitude is due to the immigrants I met and interviewed in the past couple of years. I am consistently impressed by the people I meet who have come here to make their lives anew, arriving as asylum seekers or tech entrepreneurs, and I feel incredibly lucky to hear and share their stories.
To better understand the stunning story behind the Voyager mission, I recommend The Farthest, a documentary by the Irish director Emer Reynolds, featuring an interview with interplanetary scientist Carolyn Porco. Carolyn worked on the Voyager mission and I was fortunate enough to discuss it with her on the StarTalk podcast. Many thanks to her, to Neil deGrasse Tyson, and to all the scientists and producers in the StarTalk family for making me more cosmically conscious! Carl Sagan’s book Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record is a must-read if you want to know more about the process of making the Golden Record.
I first heard about the Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat in a feature on his work that appeared in The Guardian in 2013, by David Stelfox. A great resource for anyone getting into comedy is Joe Randazzo’s book Funny on Purpose: The Definitive Guide to an Unpredictable Career in Comedy. The Margaret Atwood quote that appears in “How Funny” is from Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, 1960–1982.
Most of this book is new work, but I’ve used some writing that has previously appeared in my other books and columns as the starting point for new pieces. Many thanks to my songbird editor at Hachette, Ciara Considine, for her work on what would become “Rent the Runway” and “Swimming Against Dolphins” and “Call Me Maeve.” For that last one, I found a fun website called queenmaeve.org that had some new mythology and information (to me, at least) about my name twin. Thanks to the great Roisin Ingle at The Irish Times for commissioning me to cover Saint Patrick’s Day in New York. Rachel Dry at The New York Times provided me with inspiration, brilliant editing, and, importantly, deadlines, for columns that eventually became “Summer Isn’t the Same Without You” and “Aliens of Extraordinary Ability.”
I would be lost without my literary agent Lindsay Edgecombe and our stoop meetings and emergency calls. This book would not exist without her. My editor, Sarah Stein, shocked me with her generosity—with time, encouragement, and ideas—thanks to these two women, I did not feel alone all the time.
I also listened to Frank Ocean’s album “Blonde” on repeat throughout and I
will always love you how I do.
I’m grateful to the entire team at Penguin for their creativity, patience, and hard work, including Dave Cole, Matt Vee, Brianna Linden, Rebecca Marsh, Allison Carney, and especially Shannon Kelly.
Many thanks and much love to the following people who did all sorts of things to help me along the way: Philip Lyons, Tim McGabhann, Mel Glenn, Faith O’Grady, Shaina Feinberg, Erika Romero, Matt Shilts, Jim Hamblin, Julie Smith Clem, Naomi Westwater Weekes, Mona Chalabi, Emma Lee Moss, Chenoa Estrada, and all my darling book club sluts, including you, Jack!
My biggest thanks must go to my family for putting up with me and understanding me; to my parents and brother and sisters, and my sister- and brothers-in-law, and to all of my nieces and nephews, who brighten every day and to whom this book is dedicated. How I got to be so lucky, I will never know!
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Maeve in America Page 18