In the seventh episode of 'In the Half Light', curator Phil Mullen returns to a conversation with three writers about their experiences of growing up mixed-race in Ireland: Marguerite Penrose (author of 'Yeah But Where Are You Really From?'), Jackie McCarthy O'Brien (author of 'We Made It, Kid') and Leon Diop (author of 'Mixed Up: An Irish Boys Journey to Belonging') 

In the sixth episode of 'In the Half Light', curator Phil Mullen speaks to three writers about their experiences of growing up mixed-race in Ireland: Marguerite Penrose (author of 'Yeah But Where Are You Really From?'), Jackie McCarthy O'Brien (author of 'We Made It, Kid') and Leon Diop (author of 'Mixed Up: An Irish Boys Journey to Belonging') 

In this episode, our guest speaks openly and candidly about her childhood in an Irish industrial school. 

In recalling the ordinary routines of the home — the mix of care and radicalisation — we see how this shaped the way she learned to move through the world. 

In this conversation, we hear from an Irish woman who grew up as a mixed-race child in a country that insisted on a story of itself as white. 

These kind of experiences rarely made it into the reports on the state's institutions. Her story illuminates what it meant to navigate childhood in such an atmosphere.

In Episode 3, this series concludes by reflecting on experiences that carried into later life, and what it was like to grow up Black in Ireland before the Celtic Tiger. 

In the Half Light: Voices from Black Ireland is curated by Dr Phil Mullen, Assistant Professor of Black Studies at Trinity College Dublin and a leading researcher on the historical experiences of "mixed-race" people growing up in Ireland. Using the audio format, Phil has created an anonymised, open space for "mixed-race" people who grew up in Irish care institutions to explore the impact of their erasure from institutional abuse history and discourse in Ireland. Through this conversation, she aims to undo that erasure, one voice at a time.  

In the Half Light: Voices from Black Ireland is curated by Dr Phil Mullen, Assistant Professor of Black Studies at Trinity College Dublin and a leading researcher on the historical experiences of "mixed-race" people growing up in Ireland. Using the audio format, Phil has created an anonymised, open space for "mixed-race" people who grew up in Irish care institutions to explore the impact of their erasure from institutional abuse history and discourse in Ireland. Through this conversation, she aims to undo that erasure, one voice at a time.  

In the Half Light: Voices from Black Ireland is curated by Dr Phil Mullen, Assistant Professor of Black Studies at Trinity College Dublin and a leading researcher on the historical experiences of "mixed-race" people growing up in Ireland. Using the audio format, Phil has created an anonymised, open space for "mixed-race" people who grew up in Irish care institutions to explore the impact of their erasure from institutional abuse history and discourse in Ireland. Through this conversation, she aims to undo that erasure, one voice at a time.  

This podcast is part of  the Thinking Aloud, Thinking Together series of live and recorded conversations amplifying voices that have been silenced in Irish cultural life. It gives space to artists, writers and thinkers who offer radical new perspectives on existing narratives.  

Delivered in partnership with the Museum of Literature Ireland.