| An Orphan in History is my story as an American Jew. Ihave spent years retrieving the religious and culturallegacy which had evaporated, in my family, under thepressure of assimilation. But. with only slight variationsin personal and cultural details, it could be the story ofFrankie Ruggio, whose grandfather spoke Italian and wasnamed Dante: or of a midwestern computer techniciannamed Peter Holmes. whose Scandinavian-born grandfa-ther was a fisherman named Per Hansa: or of Joe Martin.whose father. Jose Martinez was a highly skilled cigarmaker from Havana. In a way, it is the story of millions ofimmigrant families who left the economically and culturallyconfining Old World towns where they were raised, andpaid for the freedom and prosperity this country offeredwith their pasts. At first, it must have seemed like a marvelous bargain.For most of the twentieth century, melting-pot Americawas like the pot of gold at the end of history s rainbow. Inthis land of limitless possibilities, one s past seemed to bean encumbrance: something that was filled with atavisticsuperstitions, that was anathema to enlightened people,that presented an obstacle to personal progress. But now, America s power is waning; we are living in apost-Copernican age, where we are no longer the center ofthe world. The country no longer seems to promise mygeneration----or my children s--the degree of social orphysical mobility it promised my parents and grandparents. As a result, many people who might have once ex-plored the nation s physical or economic frontiers arejourneying inward: they are Kit Carsons of the soul. Someadopt creeds that are new to them Eastern religious, oran all-embracing burn-again Christianity. But many, like/ |
内容加载中，请稍后...
商品评论（0条）