You know that feeling when you wake up in a new house and you don’t know where you are or how you got there? or maybe it’s starting a new job and not knowing anyone. I wanted to really explore that feeling so I took the character Irena out of her familiar country, where she knew how she fit in society and the expectations for women her age, and moved her to the US. Then (SPOILER ALERT) I married her to an Irish man so she was even more alienated. Most immigrants lived with other people from their home country and continued to speak their native tongue at home. They also wore clothes that just screamed ‘From the old country’.
“PSM V83 D337 Young slovak immigrant” by Unknown – Popular Science Monthly Volume 83. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PSM_V83_D337_Young_slovak_immigrant.png#/media/File:PSM_V83_D337_Young_slovak_immigrant.png
I won’t tell you how Irena ends up in Irish Chicago, where she is different from everyone else, that would be too much of a spoiler. Let’s just say she finds that living in the US with unfamiliar customs and a new language profoundly unsettling. Here is a quote from Longing For Home ‘Of a sudden I had the sensation of disintegrating. I felt myself in little pieces. Was I Solvene, American or even maybe Irish? Catholic or Pagan? For a moment I wasn’t sure even if I were male or female. I felt myself dissolving into the mountains and the fresh blue sky’. Anyone else ever have an experience like this?
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