Below is a video which includes various sections of a paper I presented at Drew University's Transatlantic Connections Conference 2 (TACC) in Bundoran, County Donegal, Ireland in January 2015. This paper is entitled "Searching for a Mother(land): Transgender Nationalism in Patrick McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto" and explores Ireland's complicated relationship with queer citizens in the 1970s as depicted in McCabe's novel. 

Patrick McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto, told from the first person perspective, recounts the story of Patrick "Pussy" Brady, whom I refer to as Pussy throughout this talk, her chosen name, a transgender prostitute living in the fictitious town of Tyreelin on the border of Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Pussy is conceived as a result of her mother's rape by the town's priest, and because of this, she is abandoned by her mother and left to live with an unloving and emotionally abusive foster mother. Retelling her story for her psychiatrist, Pussy writes both factual and fantastical accounts of her past when she left Ireland for London to search for her mother. In the end, Pussy neither finds her mother nor returns to Ireland. 

View the video's transcript here.