Gloria review

In the war of racism, Gloria Ray was deep in the trenches. ‘Little children, facing an army’, as James Baldwin famously wrote about this significant part of American history. The Little Rock Nine persevered in the face of unspeakable acts of violence, constant harassment, and death threats to their family and anyone who supported them. Elisabeth Åsbrink tells the story by sharing her conversations with Gloria Ray: ‘I am America. This is one of the first things Gloria Ray Karlmark says to me. These three words entail a story about pride, determination, and the power of will, about being confronted with the worst and smallest within humans – the ability to humiliate, torture, even kill – and how to rise above it.’

Through the narration of Gloria’s story, Åsbrink draws parallels to her own family history; her Hungarian, Jewish father was placed in a camp for refugee children in Germany after his parents were killed by the Nazis. Her maternal grandfather was a Spanish-speaking Jew from Greece. ‘I am Europe. And when I recognize Gloria already at our first meeting it’s because I know my father and all the others whom I’ve met who barely escaped Hitler, his accomplices and the silent majority who watched the abuse of power of in the name of hatred without interfering. I am the narrator, she is the story. This is Gloria – and she is America.’

The book successfully and seamlessly weaves together American and European history through the eyes of Elisabeth Åsbrink and Gloria Ray Karlmark as they travel together to Little Rock, Arkansas, visit the high school and speak with a few others from The Little Rock Nine. Åsbrink describes one of her first meetings with Gloria, now 80 years old, at a café in Stockholm, Sweden, where Gloria now lives, married since 1966 to Swedish designer Krister Karlmark. ‘I record our conversations and transcribe them. There, in the pages, in the pauses in between sentences, I see memory escaping us.’ The story is filled with captivating snapshots of moments which tie together the present with the past, and interspersed with the conversations between the two women, are details from official records, news stories, and other documentation from the time.

The description of the violence and abuse that the children (and their families) endured, from classmates, neighbors, teachers, and the authorities, is an important, although agonizing to take in, account of the horror and everyday terror of racism and the fear and the silence of the white society around them. ‘I was fourteen when the school year started and I was a hundred years old when it ended.’ Gloria keeps returning to this phrase and Åsbrink notes: ‘It is easy to hear the phrase as a beginning, but in fact, it speaks about an ending, a birthday of losses.’ Although the book tackles the difficult subjects of racism, persecution, and injustice, the overall perspective is one of hope, resilience and the power of resistance, which is a message that is as essential and relevant today as ever. Through the dialogue between Åsbrink and Gloria Ray, the book manages to bring us in close to the personal experiences of The Little Rock Nine, while also painting a picture of the overall mechanisms, contradictions and discrepancies of European and American history. In. addition, Gloria. In the Shadow of Oppression attempts to provide a backdrop for eternally incomprehensible issues, and to find answers to questions about human nature, cruelty, and compassion.