Sara Mansfield Taber

In this passage from my book Of Many Lands, I recall the grief brought on by my departure from The Netherlands:  Holland was my land of soggy farm fields, of Van Gogh, of wind­mills thrumping in the wind and frigid winter walks by the sea. It is the place I attended…

Alice Kaplan writes about why, despite her long struggle with the language, she loves to speak French: I go back and forth in my thinking about my second lan­guage. Sometimes I think, it’s only the wealthy students who get French; it’s only an expression of their class privilege. My privilege…

In an excerpt from Of Many Lands, I describe my difficulty in finding a place for myself in my passport country: The first year I am in Washington—I am 14 now—I spend each weekend earn­ing money for a planned summer trip back to Holland. I am determined to go back, even though…

Czeslaw Milosz on Americans and Europeans (pre 9/11): I walked the streets of Chicago and Los Angeles as if I were an anthropologist privileged to visit the civilizations of Incas or Aztecs. Americans accepted their society as if it had arisen from the very order of nature; so saturated with it…