Tom Deignan Writer
  • New York
  • Freelance

Tom Deignan is the author of "Irish Americans: Coming to America" (Barron’s) and served as a contributing writer for the book "Irish American Chronicle" (Publications International Ltd.). He writes the weekly Sidewalks column for the Irish Voice newspaper and contributes a monthly Op Ed column to the Newark Star Ledger. His writing has appeared in newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Irish Independent, and magazines such as Commonweal, America, Publisher's Weekly and Irish America. Currently an English teacher in Brooklyn, Deignan has taught history, cinema and English at CUNY, St. John’s University and Bowling Green State University.

Published In

Irish Voice, Irish Central

345 Articles
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

The Thanksgiving tradition of Ragamuffin Day in Irish neighborhoods

In the first half of the 20th century, particularly in heavily Irish neighborhoods, the best day for begging -- not t...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

Got a cure for crazy? Regulating the spread of misinformation

"It’s a lot harder to regulate the crazy people out there who believe these lies, and need these lies, and desperatel...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

The Newark church where an Irish American priest says Mass in Italian

If you enjoyed 'The Many Saints of Newark,' you might want to check out the Italian Mass at St. Lucy's in Newark - sa...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

The price of progress in Boston - a historic turn away from Irish American mayors

Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George will face off for the mayorship of Boston, ending nearly a century of Irish Am...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

Dehumanizing refugees - we’re bordering on insanity

It's difficult to look at the images of those desperate refugees living under a bridge and not think of those who fle...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

Social media's privacy problem as Facebook fined by Irish authorities

BOTH America and Ireland are learning that social media doesn’t age very well. Sure, the old days were a blast. All t...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

How 9/11 led to forever wars and uneasy peace

BRIAN Francis Mulheren was born in Manhattan in 1947, a time not all that long ago, when swaths of that island were s...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

An emotional and heartbreaking family visit to the 9/11 memorial

Memorials may or may not help us honor. And they don’t just do it on anniversaries. They do it every day. Sometimes t...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

Hope that American Catholics have learned from its past

"The U.S. Catholic Church “could absolutely step in” and initiate its own investigation of past abuse of Native Ameri...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

At the (Irish) movies with Jack

Matt Damon recently recalled a fascinating Jack Nicholson moment from filming ​The Departed - what would Nicholson sa...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

Muhammad Ali's grandson shows why America is the "Greatest"

COME with me, back to a simpler day. A time when a much-hyped pugilist with a name like Walsh could lace up the leath...

Read Full Article
over 2 years ago
irishcentral.com

Is the USA descending into Troubles-era Northern Ireland?

IF the thought of Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham in a balaclava is scary to you -- even if the Fox News crowd isn’t...

Read Full Article