Orphan #8 (45 page)

Authors: Kim van Alkemade

BOOK: Orphan #8

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Postcard by Photobelle W.I
. Courtesy of the Lesbian Herstory Archives Photo collection, found images folder.

As adults, Rachel and Naomi would have lived with the dual experience of their relationship being both invisible (as female spinster roommates) and dangerous. Lesbian teachers and nurses, in particular, were fearful of losing their jobs and reputations. Living in the Village would have helped to ease their sense of isolation. As Caprio helpfully notes, “The Greenwich Village section of New York City has for many years been known as a center where lesbians and male homosexuals tend to congregate, particularly those with artistic talent.” But when Naomi’s Uncle Jacob offers them his apartment rent-free, the move out to Coney Island exacerbates their sense of isolation.

The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society would have been one group where homosexuality was not condemned. Sigmund Freud’s 1909 visit to Dreamland, Luna Park, and Steeplechase Park led him to confide to his diary that the “lower classes on Coney Island are not as sexually repressed
as the cultural classes.” Freud’s visit to Coney Island was the inspiration for the 1926 formation of the Amateur Psychoanalytic Society, which met monthly and hosted an annual Dream Film award night—home movies which dramatized significant dreams and presented the dreamer’s accompanying analysis. One of them, “My Dream of Dental Irritation” by Robert Troutman, openly explores a gay theme. According to Zoe Beloff, editor of
The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and Its Circle
(New York: Christine Burgin, 2009), “Troutman says he was drawn to the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society as a teenager struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality.”

As adults, Rachel and Naomi would have lived and worked in a society that denigrated and maligned their sexuality. In the orphanage, however, the atmosphere may have been more permissive. One man, recalling his years at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in response to a survey, matter-of-factly observed, “As far as homosexuality was concerned, I think there was plenty of it going around. In my own case, I jerked off quite a few fellows, and they did likewise to me.” For girls, intense crushes—including love notes, jealous intrigues, and displays of affection—were common, though these relationships were widely understood as immature substitutes for the heterosexual attractions that were expected to eventually replace them. Unless, of course, the girls bravely chose to live “a lesbian type of existence.”

—Kim van Alkemade

The carousel at Coney Island amusement park in the 1950s. Jewish woodcarvers from Eastern Europe crafted many such horses
. Close-up from photograph in author’s collection.

Reading Group Guide for
Orphan #8

1. Was Harry Berger wrong to run away? What might have been different had he stayed?

2. What might have been different if Rachel could have told her friend Flo the truth about her relationship with Naomi?

3. Was Dr. Solomon wrong to use Rachel in her experimental study of the X-ray tonsillectomy?

4. In what ways did the Orphaned Hebrews Home benefit the children who grew up there? How were the children affected by that experience?

5. Was it selfish of Sam to leave Rachel in Leadville with their Uncle Max? Why do you think Sam keeps leaving his sister behind?

6. If Dr. and Mrs. Abrams had known that Rachel was “unnatural,” do you think they would have still been kind to her?

7. What do you think of the way Mrs. Hong treats Sparrow and Jade?

8. Is Dr. Solomon to blame for causing Rachel’s tumor, or should she be thanked for spurring Rachel’s discovery of it in time for treatment?

9. How have the medical attitudes about treating women with breast
cancer changed since Dr. Feldman’s time?

10. Would Rachel have been justified in giving Dr. Solomon an overdose of morphine in revenge?

11. How do you think Naomi will react when Rachel tells her about the cancer and her upcoming surgery?

12. What other walls have the characters built around one another, or themselves, in the novel?

Credits

Cover design by Emin Mancheril

Cover photograph © Karina Simonsen/Trevillion Images

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

ORPHAN #8.
Copyright © 2015 by Kim van Alkemade. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition August 2015 ISBN 9780062338310

ISBN 978-0-06-233830-3

1516171819
OV
/
RRD
10987654321

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