The process of marginalisation is often a painful experience for groups pushed to and beyond the margins of society. While the isolation and exclusion can be devastatingly painful and negative, some groups and individuals use this state of emergency to forge a new sense of identity and cultural expression. Often, an alternative, positive group image of those from the margins manifests, challenging the accepted and, sometimes, stereotyped view of the group, harboured by mainstream society. This is true of the evolution of group identity in relation to Irish speakers and African Americans in the last century. Within both groups, new representations of identity emerged as writers challenged the accepted views of wider society. Writers from both traditions drew upon their similar experiences of marginalisation, as well as rich, oral traditions to construct new, positive identities and to give an accurate depiction of life from the margins. This thesis will draw upon theories unique to comparative literature, such as imagology and geocriticism, to assert that the sense of camaraderie that existed between the groups, coupled with similar experiences of subjugation, resulted in positive literary expressions of identity that achieved connecting and empowering two margianlised cultures on opposite sides of the Atlantic.