Narrowbacks is a collection of short story drawn from the world of an Irish diaspora. The inspiration for the collection comes from my experiences as the daughter of Irish immigrants born into a New York world of Irish laborers. The title echoes Joyce's Dubliners but Narrowbacks is an ideological place that is a nod to a legacy of immigration. As a thematic idea, Narrowbacks invokes the position of the children who lay claim to an Irish cultural legacy splintered from homeland and, therefore, less legitimate than their parents' but theirs to recreate in America nonetheless.

The critical reflection includes five essays that examine Irish literary character through cultural experience and storytelling. Frank O'Connor's critical study The Lonely Voice features prominently as an examination of the short story genre and the qualities of form that set it apart from the novel. His claim of the "submerged population" and the "moral imagination" helped steer my critical study in Narrowbacks.

The choice to include my own narrative in the critical study was influenced by Fintan O' Toole's We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. In recreating the story of his childhood to the present, O'Toole constructs the modern Ireland that my parents left and its connection to the America they occupied. His weaving of personal narrative around Irish politics in church and state, economic conditions, and the dynamics of Irish family life influenced my decision to include my own narrative reflection.