![]() I first met Kaz when the four of us and our friends and relations went on board the 38' catamaran we were going to sail around the world. I think there is more to win than to lose from participating actively in different cultural communities, - as long as the right to move on is granted in case it does not work out! La condition humaine - a constant struggle and disappointment, but as Helga would have seen if she had allowed herself to look back: also an adventure with many roads open to those who dare to try them. But too many of us still struggle to combine longing for freedom with a wish to belong to a conventional community, or hope for an independent life with yearning for children. ![]() It is better now, in some parts of the world. Women around the world live like that, and feel Helga’s despair without any reason to believe that they will be able to break free and live a life embracing different layers of identity at the same time. In the end, she resigns herself to life being a disappointment, and to being stuck in a failure she can’t run away from anymore: she has children to take care of. Waking up from the soothing effect of the illusion that she can hand over the responsibility for her own life to a higher supernatural power and a rewarding afterlife, she rejects her short era of faith with disgust. Returning to America, she fails to acknowledge her own feelings for a man until it is too late, and out of frustration, she reacts with an extreme change of path, marrying a preacher from the South, and finding happiness in rural life and religion - for a while. She moves to Copenhagen, and enjoys her exotic reputation - for a while, until she starts missing the half of her identity that is rooted in African American culture. The politicised environment that thrives in rage against everything that represents white life excludes a part of her as well. Over Chicago, where she faces the blatant racism of her white relatives, she arrives in Harlem, and enjoys the thrill of the city for a while - until she realises that she has been there long enough to know that is not her world either. This she saw clearly now, and with cold anger at all the past futile effort. ![]() ![]() “She could neither conform, nor be happy in her unconformity. Resigning from a teaching position at a conservative school in the South of the US because she can’t face its hypocrisy, she starts her rebellion against a society that she can’t adopt. Once used to moving on, it is hard to stay in one place.įor Helga, born in an era less populated with global nomads, being the daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian straying father seemed to be an irreconcilable and unique identity. Today it is quite common, but still disturbing, especially during adolescence, which I can confirm myself, having lived through a childhood of regular relocations, and now repeating the pattern with my own children. Had Helga been my contemporary, I would have told her about the ever growing literature on the strange identity of third culture or cross culture kids, growing up between different communities, partly at home in both, but never fully belonging. Somehow, Helga Crane’s odyssey through life - from excitement to disappointment, to rebellion, break-out, and new excitement, leading to repeated disappointment - mirrors and reflects the difficulties all people face who do not completely fit into their environment. But there is so much more, touching on the universal and timeless questions of identity and meaning of life. And it would be both right and enough to make it a worthwhile reading experience. You could argue that it is a story about the peculiar hardships of young African American women of the 1920s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |