Introduction
Anyone who has spent time living in another country understands how that experience can reshape your sense of self. The mirrors that reflect that self are different and you find yourself becoming a foreigner; not only to others but maybe even to yourself. Clare Muller, the protagonist of Kathy Taylor’s novel, The Birthing House, spends two separate years, twenty years apart, in the medieval town of Marburg, Germany.
For Clare, the cultural and linguistic challenges to her identity are intensified by other factors as well: grief and loss, pregnancy, motherhood, the academic pressure to write a book during her sabbatical. But she soon learns the difference between her own temporary relocation and the experience of immigrants and refugees, who have given up their homelands forever.
Immigration
The reasons for immigration are complex; often tied to fleeing violence, oppression, poverty, displacement as a result of political changes, and in some cases the repression of women and rigid boundaries of social identity that exclude them. In Marburg, Clare finds friendships with women from a variety of countries and their stories open her world with new perspectives. The choices that immigrants make come with sacrifices and loss as well as hope for a new life. Many leave behind family, their mother tongue and the history and way of life that shaped who they are.
Uprooted Identities
The characters in The Birthing House tell their own stories.
Julia and her family fled Poland as the Soviet takeover began to threaten their freedom and opportunities, leaving behind her career as a lawyer. Poles have always lived in the middle, in constant fear of our neighbors invading our country, taking our freedom, and treating us as subhuman, Julia explains to her new friends.
Christina grew up in the Sudetenland, once part of Nazi Germany and later Cold War Czechoslovakia. Her family fled to Germany, her supposed homeland that didn’t feel like home. I always considered myself German, Christina recalls, but I had never lived in Germany. I went to school in Czech and heard it all around me. My homeland went from being Czech to part of Germany and then back again.
Samira is from Somalia, a country going through constant changes, and the growing autonomy and status that women had obtained in the 1970s was quickly slipping away into a military dictatorship with extreme restrictions on women. Samira works in women’s health and helps other refugees adapt to life in Germany, many of whom do not accept her more modern ways. I consider myself Muslim and I still pray to Allah, she explains, but I can’t accept that women are second class and that men should have all the authority over them.”
Isra is from Turkey. As an independent and queer Muslim woman, her identity was an act of extreme betrayal in her home culture and her life was in danger there because of that. She found a supportive community in Berlin and later moved to Marburg with her partner. It’s hard when who you are doesn’t fit anywhere, she says. I think identity is like a buffet. You start with what you are given and choose the parts that work for you.
Noam and Marya are from Israel and they moved to Germany for Noam’s research at the university in Marburg. But we were also uncomfortable with the growing militarization and political extremism in Israel,” Noam says. “It’s ironic, in a way. We are Israeli Jews but we are more at home here in Germany.”
A New Life
For these characters and many more, Germany was a haven that offered a chance to start anew, to embrace and expand their identities and life choices, even though the cost of leaving home was so high. Several of them meet, along with Clare, through childbirth preparation classes, where they share the experience of pregnancy and birth; quintessential symbols of new life and identity. Their friendships also grow around their perspectives as foreigners adjusting to a new language and culture, and as women finding their way into new motherhood.
A New Germany
The Birthing House is also a novel about the changing face of Germany as it moves from the trauma of the Nazi Era to becoming a haven of diversity for immigrants, refugees, and the blind from around the world. Migration has always been a part of human history, and the full story of who we are is more complex than we know. This novel examines some of that complexity as it celebrates the possibilities of friendships and new beginnings, while honoring the sacrifices and difficult choices that may take us there.