Memory must bring people together

Elie Wiesel, Buchenwald survivor and Nobel Laureate, spoke just moments ago during his visit to Buchenwald with Barack Obama and Angela Merkel.

After saying that it is enough - there has been enough visiting cemeteries and enough weeping, he continued:

“Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories heed not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary a sense of solidarity with all those who lead us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere will say the twenty-first century is a century of new beginnings filled with promise and infinite hope and that time’s profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task wishes to improve the human condition. A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel The Plague, ‘After all,’ he said, ‘after the tragedy, nevertheless there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate.’ Even that can be found as truth, painful as it is, in Buchenwald.”

Dual, Doubled and Divided

I’m trying to finish this article on plural identities in Francophone women’s autobiographies and I’m stuck in thoughts of my fractured sense of self. Ever since Sorenne was born I have had a new appreciation for the women I’ve been reading for years: Cardinal, Cixous, Sebbar, among many others. This child came from me and for the first four and a half months was exclusively nourished by me. Reproduction simply works in that mind-boggling fashion. As much as she was or is a part of me, I feel completely independent from that child. She was her own person from the first time I felt her move in the womb. I never want to be a woman whose identity is caught up in the perceived success and failure of her child. That girl is so completely her own, and while we are deeply bonded (she’s a bit mommy crazy these days), she has her own identity.

I had an awkward moment yet again yesterday when a colleague said she has my eyes. I do not know how to react to these continual statements of, “Sorenne looks just like you,” from friends and strangers. Part of me doesn’t really see it, and the other part just doesn’t know how to react. Is this a complement? Poor girl. Maybe she doesn’t want to look like me. Still, she’s limited somewhat by my genes. Inescapably doubled, or at least divided, but mostly that feeling is driven by a severe lack of sleep.