Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1961-08-01 / 8. szám

12

FRATERNITY

TERÉZ B. STIBRÁN:

THE STREETS ARE NOT PAVED WITH GOLD

From Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where Nobel Prize bio-chemist Szentgyörgyi conducts his experiments which may shed some light on the very essence of physical life, to Azusa, California, where colleagues of that genial sage of rocketry, Dr. Kármán, contemplate plans to probe the moon — immigrants are at work. And so there are in ever

so many colleges and factories and offices and farms. Yet the kaleidoscopic panorama of immigrant life is seldom the subject of a novel,

though there are philosophical treatises on it by Adamic and others.

Immigration being the result of different hardships or upheavals, there are, therefore, different types of immigrants, too. The mentality of the one seeking a haven against material scarcity is bound to be unlike the one escaping from political persecution. This immediately separates them into different strata even in new surroundings and assimilation is thus a double-barreled, though necessarily slow process, consisting of the shake-down procedure of the indigenous factions among themselves on the one hand, and the adjustments going on simultaneously with the new surroundings and contacts, on the other.

Transylvanian Áron Tamási was one who touched upon these often

trying experiences with a keen Székely eye. Now there is a fair lady from the largely immigrant-populated metropolis of Cleveland who takes a 469-page jab at this intriguing material. While Tamási’s books are still awaiting a proficient translator, Teréz Dunajszky Stibrán produced her magnum opus in, to do her credit, fluent English.

“Instinctively the author, wife of Dr. John Stibrán, has maintained

suspense throughout, and has presented vividly the problems all immigrants must face . . . This is, in essence, the story of a young Hungarian woman’s hegira to the United States when the Trianon Treaty had turned part of her homeland over to the Czechs after World War

I: her years of struggle to learn English and work her way up to a

good position . . . She was blonde and beautiful, and very determined, and the reader soon will find himself cheering as he follows her battles, often against relatives, to achieve success in a country she has come to love” — to quote the book editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, largest Ohio daily newspaper with well over half a milllion circulation.

It is, indeed, strange that this is termed “the only book of its kind”. Should this really be so, Mrs. Stibrán’s contribution will perhaps open the eyes of many other writers with American and European background, inducing them to delve further into this untapped “gold mine”, immigrants and their descendants, their trials and tribulations in a New World. Strangely enough the twentieth century aspects

and possibilities of this theme have hardly been touched upon thus far, much less exploited, though with the 1956 Budapest Rising a whole new vista has opened in this field.