If all goes well, I shall by Christmas be the mother of an American: my younger son, who has lived in the States for years, will have become a citizen.
It is interesting how many different things the word “America” conjures up. For John Donne it meant anything new and wonderful when he called his love “my America, my new found land”. For a good many poor countries it calls up thoughts of glossy cars and refrigerators. For my husband it was jazz and westerns even before he’d ever visited the place; though a Quaker, he went round Cambridge as a student in US army uniform.
For Michael Gove it was books, doubtless worthy, but which must not be allowed to elbow out our homegrown British literature. For those who have worked or studied in America (such as me and the man who edits this magazine) it’s a marvellous agglomeration of memories and first impressions, though the affluence of America must have been a more staggering contrast with postwar Europe for me in the 1950s than he’d have found.
“American” for various Middle Eastern people is synonymous with females who are allowed too much freedom, education even – and indecent clothes. But so vast and various is America that whatever you call “American” can probably be found in that country. And even if it didn’t necessarily start there, like Americano coffee, who cares?
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