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| The first immigrant to NYC was Juan Rodriguez, from the Dominican Republic. The Dutch Came Later! |
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| Jean Rhys, ca. 1920
By Lilian Pizzichini, New York, WW Norton & Co., 2009
Jean Rhys was a difficult person who lived a hard life and possessed a rare literary talent. The strength of this biography is that Pizzichini wants to tell the tale of Rhys's life as she experienced it. Rather than labeling Rhys as having a "borderline personality disorder," Pizzichini creates an empathetic portrait of the author. Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea while in her 70s and often consuming a bottle of whiskey per day. |
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| Brassai, Cathedral, ca. 1930
By Jean Rhys, New York, WW Norton & Co., 1985
After a break from writing for over twenty years, Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea in the 1960s, and it reads like a delirious nightmare. The sensibility is the same--this is clearly a Jean Rhys work--and she reimagines Jane Eyre from the perspective of Grace Pool. Pow! It is like a brilliant hallucination. Her concern for those passed over as marginal, crazy, or foreign is fully evident here. This is post-colonial literature in the best tradition of "the empire strikes back." (Although, the heroine is a white Creole. This isn't The Beloved.) The novel bursts forth with the fully realized power of a distinctly alternative view point.
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| Brassai, Untitled, ca. 1930
By Jean Rhys, New York, WW Norton & Co., 1985
My favorite of Rhy's early novels. Sasha Jensen is her most articulate heroine. She is in her late 30s or early 40s and looks within herself to understand life's pain. Sasha is sloshed but doesn't indulge in self-pity. This novel is about how tenuous human connections are and the unrelenting grind of poverty. The strength of Rhy's work is that she focuses on the interior landscape of her heroines. The outside events in her novels are fairly uniform, so she turns her attention to the feelings and motivations of her characters. Her characters are Bohemian lounge-abouts, but sensitive and perceptive too.
Good Morning, Midnight! I'm coming home, Day got tired of me-- How could I of him? Sunshine was a sweet place, I'd like to stay-- But Morn didn't want me--now-- So good night, Day! Emily Dickinson |
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| Brassai, Untitled, ca. 1930
By Jean Rhys, New York, WW Norton & Co., 1985
Julia Martin is in her mid-30s and living in Paris when Mr. Mackenzie dumps her. She leaves for her native London where she confronts her sister who has a lived a life of middle-class, though impoverished, conformity. Unable to earn a living--we also learn that she is divorced and her child has died--she asks former lovers for money. Disappointed, she returns to Paris and her life resumes its pattern of drink, hotel rooms, and hurt feelings. Julia is neither a successful member of Bohemia nor a bourgeoisie. She drifts along on the edge of both worlds. All of Rhys's heroines are betrayed, alone, and poor. |
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| Brassai, Untitled, ca. 1930
By Jean Rhys, New York, WW Norton & Co., 1985
We are in what is clearly Jean Rhys Land: a young woman in the 1930s drinks to excess, lives in a series of hotel rooms, asks for gifts of money from ex-lovers, and suffers a great deal. I don't mean to be flip. There's an undeniable freshness and honesty about Rhys work that is very winning. Marya Zelli marries a Polish thief, he is caught and thrown into jail. She becomes involved in a menage a trois with rich expatriates. Misery all around.
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| Brassai, Untitled, ca. 1930
By Jean Rhys, New York, WW Norton & Co., 1985
Anna Morgan is from the West Indies and living in inter-war (or pre-WWI?) London. Her father is dead, the rest of her family apathetic, and working as a chorus girl. Her first affair ends in an abortion. Rhys's style reminds me of Vermeer: the prose is precise, closely observed, and concerned with the things of everyday life. Anna's passivity in the face of psychological disaster is noteworthy. She is vacant, empty, ghost-like as she moves through the world. Her only escape is alcohol when seemingly anything might happen. She drinks until bedtime and then pulls the covers over her head to dream of her childhood.
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