Letters to the Editor: I hope I am wrong — but Ireland no longer feels safe for people like me
The 1999 St Patrick's Day parade making its way down Dame St in Dublin. Landa Wo writes that 'Ireland was a safe land for people like me' at that time. Picture: Chris Bacon/PA
Twenty-five years ago, as an Afro French, I chose the Ireland of Eavan Boland, Ciaran O’Driscoll, Beckett, Joyce, Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin, Paula Meehan, and Yeats as my adoptive country.
Unable to resign myself to following to the letter the slogan of he whom Malraux called ‘the soul of the Glières’ Tom Morel — “Live free or die” — I chose a middle way, the painful choice of exile, once I understood that my qualifications would at best allow me to settle at the periphery of French society, and never to become a full participant.
