Her first American by Segal

¶ … United States immigrant experience has been well chronicled by the plethora of literature on the subject. However, despite the often talked about themes, Lore Segal's book "Her First American" has become an enduring American classic already twenty years in the making. Her novel follows the adventures of twenty-two-year-old Ilka Weissnix, a refugee from Hitler's Europe who is living in New York's "Whashingtein Heights." Segal's account of Ilka's American experience captures fully the mixture of ethnic and racial tensions that existed within the United States even to this day.

Her novel begins with Ilka's journey west of the Appalachians; she travels to Cowtown, Nevada, yet believed she to be in Utah. She exclaims, "I have believed I am being in Utah, isn't it?" her quiet mutterings attracts the attention of Carter Bayoux, a middle aged African-American from Georgia. Segal's comic combination of a Jewish immigrant and an American journalist begins the drama that would unfold to reveal a true tale of understanding of American culture. Ilka explains that she wants to see the real America, that her experiences in New York are not the real America where she only meets other refugees. She happily exclaims to Carter "you are my first real American," to which he dryly replies "of the second class." Thus begins a two-year love affair with Carter, in which she finally learns the nuances of American culture and the lifestyle of the distinctly American outlook.

The character of Carter Bayoux may very well be Segal's greatest creation; he is one of the enduringly great creations of American literature. A black intellectual of the fifties, he is a journalist, teacher, writer, former advisor to the United Nations on race relations. While he appears to know "everyone" he is also terminally alone, and thus his enduring legacy is the alcohol that is slowly consuming him towards death, while begging for the attention of any women who cares to come along for the ride. Ilka and his journey become symbolic of his self-destruction, but also the education of a lifetime. Ilka's description of his duality is poetic summed up by the following passage, "she did not recognize his hair, and that the size of his mouth and his laughter did not go with the urbane way he bent his wrist and crossed his ankles; that the luxurious tweed of his jacket contradicted his flattened nose with its small outgrowth of wild flesh at the bridge, which intimated to the girl disastrous chances, moving accidents his youth had suffered." As they tumble together towards oblivion, Carter is able to give Ilka the education of a lifetime; they experience New York, the world, and everything in between.