Skip to main content

Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else

Review

Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else

I first encountered Irish comedian Maeve Higgins as a panelist on the radio comedy game show “You’re the Expert,” where a panel of comedians humorously plumbs the depths of a scientist or an academic’s area of expertise. Higgins’ quietly wry jokes, delivered in that lilting Irish accent, won me over immediately, so I was very pleased to encounter her book of essays, MAEVE IN AMERICA.

As the title suggests, many of the pieces in this collection are directly or indirectly concerned with the surprising moments of culture shock one finds when moving to another country, even one as ostensibly similar as the United States is to Ireland. In one essay, Higgins admits her discomfort with the American style of small talk, which she finds too intense and high-stakes relative to the comfortable, often funny exchanges between two Irish strangers on a train. She also reflects, in an essay appropriately titled “How Funny,” on the Irish sense of humor and how it was especially well developed in her large and loving (and shamelessly funny) family. In an essay that starts off fairly frivolously --- about her obsession with Instagram Stories --- she reflects on her desire to document a trip back to Ireland for a family gathering and what this impulse reveals about what she values in her life.

"[M]any of the pieces in this collection are directly or indirectly concerned with the surprising moments of culture shock one finds when moving to another country, even one as ostensibly similar as the United States is to Ireland."

But Higgins also uses her status as a relative newcomer to the United States to write more broadly on the topic of immigration. In a particularly outstanding essay entitled “Aliens of Extraordinary Ability,” she uses an assignment to cover New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parades for the Irish Times as an opportunity to reflect on her experience as an Irish immigrant to the United States in the 21st century and how it differed from the generations of Irish immigrants who came through Ellis Island. The piece is still humorous, but it nevertheless touches on issues of race, privilege and cultural memory in powerful ways.

Similarly, “Wildflowers” ostensibly traces Higgins’ attempts to launch the second season of a podcast about immigration, under pressure from her producer to make it funnier. Needless to say, as the essay’s events unfold in the wake of the Trump inauguration and travel ban, and as Higgins interviews DACA recipients and desperate family members reaching through the border wall in San Diego’s Friendship Park, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to tell these stories in a way that will be acceptable to her ratings-obsessed producer. Higgins’ outsider status gives her a unique position from which to comment on current political affairs in the United States, and readers will enjoy considering her point of view.

But not everything in this collection is global in scale. The book contains essays on renting formalwear, adopting rescue dogs and swimming with dolphins, among many other less weighty subjects. They are funny, to be sure, but like the best comedy, nearly everything Higgins writes is tinged with just the slightest hint of melancholy, anger or self-doubt, which will endear her to readers and make them eager to seek out her variety of work in other mediums --- and maybe even her Instagram Stories.

Reviewed by Norah Piehl on August 10, 2018

Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else
by Maeve Higgins

  • Publication Date: August 7, 2018
  • Genres: Essays, Humor, Nonfiction
  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books
  • ISBN-10: 0143130161
  • ISBN-13: 9780143130161