“Mixed Middlings”: Irish Jewish Intersections

This article explores recent literature which reflects on the intersections and interstices between Jewishness and Irishness. The discussion focuses in particular on two novels: Maurice White's Keep Breathing Out (2013) and Ruth Gilligan's Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan (2016). Drawing from Foucault's theory of heterotopian, “other” spaces, this article explores representations of the Promised Land, the Fifth Province, and the asylum in these texts, contending that the asylum, which is seemingly marginal, is in fact central to constructing and defining an idea of Irish Jewishness.