Risk, Courage, and Women: Contemporary Voices in Prose and Poetry

crossing borders

273 crossing borders to be nobody but yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. —e. e. cummings Despite Robert Frost’s admonition concerning unthinking acceptance of “Good fences make good neighbors,” as humans we have continued to create countless borders, often assuming their necessity. Some are political, others physical or religious. This chapter deals with obliterating the personal boundaries that restrict the development of our real selves as well as those that keep us from reaching out and being part of the total community of humanity. Camus reflected, “To know oneself, one should assert oneself.” In this chapter , the “real self” of these authors forced them to step over social boundaries as well as those formed by a lack of understanding or empathy from others and set by the limits of their own mortality. The initial selections deal with parents’ impact on their children and grandchildren, forging a direction for future generations. In “Ruth Marantz Cohen: Une Vie Exceptionelle,” her daughter, Rosetta, recalls her mother’s crossing the conventions of time, being different from most women of her day. She kept her maiden name, spoke French to her children, and chose a career over being a “housewife.” Cohen writes, “I grew into adulthood watching my mother forge her own unique identity as intellectual and existentialist, a philosophy which celebrated free will, ‘choice,’ and the preeminence of acting on one’s convictions.” She adds, “My mother had taught me that the self is something you construct out of your own imagination and creativity, and that the act of self-creation is the most important work of a life.” Joan Loveridge-Sanbonmatsu’s grandmother would find a good friend in Cohen’s mother. In “The Telling of It,” she is “a woman, independent and strong,” who wasn’t afraid of her granddaughter crossing cultural borders to marry a Japanese-American husband. Yet, Loveridge-Sanbonmatsu must answer questions about her own parents’ refusal to attend her wedding or even Risk, Courage, and Women 274 to acknowledge her children. “How do you tell your sons / you stepped beyond the pale?” By leaving the bounds of her limited “white world,” she found a better life. Yet, she understands that there will be more tests for her sons when they choose their own future paths. Gail Hosking Gilberg’s choices have impacted not only her own life, but her sons’ as well. She grew up on an army base where “one was either Catholic or Protestant,” so until college she didn’t know any Jews. When she met her future husband on campus and he told her he was Jewish, she insisted that he meant “Irish.” In “Conversion,” Gilberg has to redefine her religious truths when she changes faiths. “I wanted a common language in my home; I needed to pull together the disconnection of husband and wife like one might pull together community to the earth.” She explores “how to live with threads of two separate histories” and how to deal with society’s often negative response to her decision. “We Who Believe in Freedom,” by Connie Curry, and “Turbulent Odyssey for Justice,” by Joan Loveridge-Sanbonmatsu both also involve responses to discrimination. Curry writes about two courageous women who risked intimidation and harassment to break down boundaries imposed upon them by segregation . Loveridge-Sanbonmatsu takes suny Brockport to court for sex discrimination. All these women become empowered by their own willingness to fight injustice. They model activism at the most moral level. As Shirley Chisholm, the first African American to win a seat in Congress proclaimed, “In the end, anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing—anti-humanism.” Demetrice Anntía Worley reminds us that there is still a long way to go. In her poem “Dancing in the Dark,” she straddles two worlds: One is white academia where she presents a paper “in a herringbone tweed suit,” and the other, where “Soul slow dances back into my body.” Balancing dual identities is also paramount when feeling forced to learn another language. Pat Mora relates the overwhelming frustration and humiliation of crossing language barriers. In “Elena” and “Learning English: Chorus in Many Voices,” we feel the embarrassment of not speaking English well, but being driven to learn it. At age forty, Elena pushes herself to learn English knowing that she...