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twenty-six-foot bronze statue of the tyrannical leader. Évike had walked past it many times and tried to imagine the scene as her father described factory workers, working with ropes and the acetylene torches they’d brought, struggling to bring it down. Then her father’s voice increased in volume and Évike sensed he was smiling, saying, “Hours later, with the crowd roaring, Stalin toppled from the pedestal in the square that had been renamed for him. All that is left…two enormous boots standing upright.” At this, her mother shouted with joy.
    Her father’s tone grew quiet and serious again, repeating what he’d heard about freedom fighters, as they were now being called, attacking telephone exchanges, printing presses and several arms factories in various parts of the city. They’d removed posters of Stalin, portraits of General Secretary Rakosi, and books from shops selling Russian literature, and tossed them into the streets before burning them. They’d stormed the offices of Szabad Nép , the Communist daily newspaper carrying “official” news, and overtaken the presses.
    Her mother had been right, Évike concluded. The symbolic act of cutting the hammer and sickle from the Hungarian tricolor had become a revolutionary act. In less than forty-eight hours, two hundred insurgents had lost their lives in the fighting in Budapest, the majority at the radio building.
    A demonstration had been fueled into the Uprising.

Chapter Five
    Chicago, 1986
    Today: Discuss the article of clothing or native costume you brought with you to America. Next Meeting: Bring a favorite ‘old country’ recipe!
    I like to model the assignments that I give to the women in the English conversation group I lead twice a month. So I am wearing Auntie Mariska’s fringed silk shawl draped over my shoulders. The shawl is black and splashed with colorful flowers embroidered in a traditional Hungarian pattern. The flowers form a wide meandering border cascading to a large bouquet at the “V” of the triangular shawl’s tip. A free-floating cluster in a circular design rests festively upon each of my shoulders.
    I have sketched a dress next to today’s assignment. Now, the bit of flair. I begin filling in a ribbony swath over the bodice. The chalk squeaks. My body convulses in an involuntary shiver and the billowing piece gets an extra squiggle. I return the chalk to the grooved tray at the base of the blackboard. The shawl slips. I am rearranging it, centering the clusters on my shoulders, as the door opens and the excited, high-pitched cacophony of several women speaking at once spills into the library meeting room.
    Called Circle of World Women, or COWWs, as we jokingly refer to ourselves, the conversation group—part cultural orientation, part English practice, part emotional support—is one of several community outreach programs I run for the Willow Grove County Library System.
    â€œTo really succeed in America, immigrants need to be both bicultural and bilingual,” the library director told me at the ten-minute briefing at which I was handed the experimental project, in skeleton form, three years ago. “Ildikó, you’ll be their cultural bridge.”
    I was thrilled to be entrusted with such a humanitarian venture. I had an approach up my sleeve. Simply apply the technique that got my mother to open up. Put a swath of linen into her hands and when she started sewing, ask questions. But for COWWs, instead of using embroidery, as I had with her, I select an activity or assignment that will evoke some aspect of the cultural heritage of the women. I might bring a drawing or photograph, a poem, magazine article, fairy tale, or even music. For recent immigrants who have only been together a few times, like today’s group, I’ve found using an article of clothing is like introducing a universal language. What woman can resist talking about the