Page 28 - Jewish News_November-2020

28A November 2020 JEWISH INTEREST

An understanding of intergenerational trauma

brimming with illuminations and courage

Book review by Philip K. Jason, Special to The Jewish News
The Escape Artist by Helen Fremont. was only slowly and partially revealed. ulated into making each other victims. by freeing itself from being a strict
Gallery Books. 2020. It’s almost as if the mother and father Slowly, with elegance, fortitude chronology. She chooses to jump back
351 pages. $28. were ashamed of surviving, and parts and harrowing self-accusations, Fre- and forth in time in order to orchestrate
of their disguised cover stories, once mont reveals the stages of her liberation scenes that have, when juxtaposed,
his powerful, intelligent and revealed, explain why. and her pursuit of self-definition. There enhanced reverberations. Her poetic
highly moving memoir explores As a writer, Fremont is a fine cli- are so many intricate strands that make prose also has a quality of reverbera-
Tthe persistence of trauma as it nician, pressing to understand and ex- up the evolving Helen Fremont. One is tion.
affects children of survivors. As Helen plore her trauma inheritance. Over and her slow-growing recognition and ac- This is more than one person’s
and her sister Lara grew up, they had over, she shares searing insights and ceptance of her lesbian identity, anoth- memoir. It is the pursuit of a larger,
gathered pieces of devastating disappointments. er is her love of athletic pursuits and more fully shareable understanding
their parents’ (and Her life and worth become a strange natural surroundings, and yet another of intergenerational trauma brimming
other relatives’) kind of penance for never truly know- is her somewhat wandering pathway to with illuminations and courage.
Holocaust experi- ing the sacrifices that the parents had to and through professional development Philip K. Jason is Professor Emeritus
ences. They real- endure, submerge and transform. The and performance. Who was she trying of English from the United States Na-
ized, with varying parents manifest a sorrowful kind of to please all these years? Why would val Academy. He reviews regularly for
degrees of trepi- survivors’ guilt that they transformed she so often choose paths likely to be the Washington Independent Review
dation, that much into a range of valuable accomplish- anathema to her parents? Can true love of Books, Southern Literary Review,
had been hidden ments. Always fearing exposure, they exist without mutual sacrifices? The au- other publications and the Jewish Book
from them. strove to steer the daughters away from thor keeps gnawing at such questions. Council. Please visit Phil’s website at
Phil Jason The parents’ experiences and decisions that might Fremont’s book gains energy www.philjason.wordpress.com.
large personalities release hints that risk exposure of the almost buried
burst through the masks, signaling that past. They overstepped the normal
much had been withheld. The secrets borders of familial love, using paren-
involve a sense of shared obligations, tal power as a weapon rather than an
daring decisions, invented biograph- embrace or commendation. They were
ical details and doses of crippling monstrous in the way they played fa-
shame. The daughters lived in a shad- vorites. For decades, the sisters were
ow world that had its own life, one that psychologically victimized and manip-

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