Last night I had my other book group meeting (the “lawyer-loaded” one). The book, Lahiri’s “Namesake,” is wonderfully readable in a sad sort of way, as it chronicles the life of an Indian immigrant family. I am, of course, mesmerized by accounts of immigrant displacement. Doesn’t matter that I am not Bengali, I have never been to an American-Bengali party in my life, I don’t even seek out Poles living in America -- as has been repeatedly pointed out to me, in the spirit of: “if you’re so homesick for Poles, why don’t you go hang out at the Polish food store in Middleton?”
I am not really “homesick” and certainly not pathetic enough to hang with the kielbasy just so that I can hear my native tongue. It is more accurate to say that I am displaced. Having lived in the States as a girl (ages 7 – 13), I was more like the child of immigrants, having picked up Americanisms early on – only to throw them away again when we returned to Poland. So I can’t even wear the “first generation immigrant” label very well because I was crossing the ocean too many times, a habit that is still with me now. Hence the name of the blog. No one else gets it, but it has great significance to me.
One more note on book choices. In my other, “neighborhood” book group, the leaders were looking for interesting titles for future months, and of course, as usual, I foisted a title about World War II, this one describing a disintegrating social fabric in the city of Berlin. I’m sure there has to be some eye-rolling about my choices. The first time I went to a meeting of this group some four or five years ago, I suggested that we read the “Rape of Europa,” and then, soon after, the “Reader,” and so on. So long as it’s confession time, I should admit that certain persons from this household, when they were younger, commented that they were spoon fed books about Santa Claus and World War II survival in about equal doses. You’d be amazed how many titles I could find on the Holocaust or the Resistance Movement that I believed were appropriate for children.
It’s not that I myself feel compelled to read only from this period of European history. It’s worse than that: I feel compelled to recommend (meaning “force”?) books to others about these topics. “Here, you want to know what I think we all should read? This. And this. And this.”
When I left NY at 13 to make my home again in Poland, I remember vividly the classroom I left behind, with the usual display of maps, photos, student work, posters of famous people, who knows what else. An American classroom has more things posted, suspended, plastered on walls, windows, doors and ceilings than I would think possible for anyone to even look at in the course of the year. The first day back in a Polish classroom I was struck by its complete nakedness. There was one straw mat on the wall. On it, there was a black and white photo of the rubble that was Warsaw after the war. There was a banner across the bottom which read “Never Again.” I saw it every day, for all three years of my high school life there.
