In Alice McDermott’s National Book Award-winning novel Charming Billy (1998),
second-generation Irish American cousins living in Queens, New York, inherit the
dreams—and the American dream—of their immigrant parents. At a wake held in the
1980s for the title character Billy Lynch, a tight-knit community of mourners meditate
on the romantic underpinnings of, and the darker lived realities often belying,
hopes and dreams passed on from one generation to the next. In this roundtable
discussion, three panelists will use McDermott’s novel as a touchstone for a broader
discussion about how, why, and to what end immigrant dreams are passed on, taken
up, and transposed across generations in American literature, history, and society.