The Revial Pt. 13: My Connection to Eva Hoffman

 Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman grabbed my attention immediately when she began to tell the story of her mother taking her to the library every two weeks. Hoffman explains how she almost lived vicariously through the characters she read about in the different books she read. I too did this as a child. I moved around a lot in elementary school, and it was difficult to make friends at times. I also spent most days after school, as well as summers at my Gram’s house which was about twenty minutes from where I lived at any given time. So, I would grab a good book and escape into various stories and my personal favorites were anything written by Judy Blume and The Baby-Sitters Club series. I even went as far as making up a mock baby-sitting service and had a phone with my logo taped to it! I would take fake phone calls for baby-sitting jobs and go off to babysit my Cabbage Patch Dolls.

I was also connected to Hoffman’s Polish heritage. My family is Polish and I’m not that familiar with many traditional Polish practices, etc. Hoffman’s account of when she read Sienkiewicz and that it was almost expected of the Polish children to read this particular author. She describes Sienkiewicz as the “laureate of Polish nationalism” and how she mostly read his pieces for the hints of sexual innuendo. I chuckled to myself as I read this, because as a young child I remember reading Judy Blume’s Are you there God, it’s me Margaret.  There was a reference in this particular book about a young girl who became a “woman” in the story and how she felt and what she experienced. I would frequently read this book so I would know what to do when I came into the world of “womanhood” so to speak.

Although Hoffman’s account was many years before my own experience with literature, I felt as if we were one in the same. Even though many years can separate two people, it amazed me how closely related our experiences truly were.  The technologies of writing have become so far advanced in so many different ways, but literature up until recently has remained the same. Now the question is, “To Kindle or not to Kindle?” If I “do” Kindle, will a young woman many years down the line be able to relate, or will the Kindle or other e-readers become obsolete?

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