"The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions become -- and such lucidity is a form of joy."
Eva takes pride in her ability to comprehend and employ language. What once was a point of great suffering -- the English language -- has become her greatest resource. She sees her mind taking shape through language and horizons expanding as it reaches more and more people.
"Sometimes I long to forget . . . It is painful to be conscious of two worlds."
Hoffman expresses the suffering of being an immigrant. She remembers her childhood in Poland fondly, so fondly that it often compromises her happiness in America today. Only because she knows both to be rewarding and sweet does she suffer. A person can only live in one place at a time and, recognizing the beauty of her homeland and of the U.S., Hoffman struggles to feel content in either place.
"No, I'm no patriot, nor was I ever allowed to be. And yet, the country of my childhood lives within me with a primacy that is a form of love. It lives within me despite my knowledge of our marginality, and its primitive, unpretty emotions."
Hoffman loves Poland with a tenderness with which she loves herself and her family. Although she sees the reasons her family left and why her present allegiance to America is so meaningful, she cannot help but love her homeland. She remembers the tenderness of the people around her which they never showed but which she experienced in the vigor with which they persisted. Once seen, that can never be forgotten.
"My going to a shrink is, among other things, a rite of initiation: initiation into the language of the subculture within which I happen to live, into a way of explaining myself to myself. But gradually, it becomes a project of translating backward."
In her therapy sessions, Hoffman realizes how her focus is more upon mastering English than learning about herself, but in this process she does learn about herself. As the language opens up to her, she is given an entirely new set of tools with which to analyze her past. This American perspective ushers in a great deal of acceptance, of identification in reconciling past and present.
