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Summary Of Naxos By Helga Ethos

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In Naxos, Helga understands that freedom is conditional upon your class status, specifically familial status and connections. We see this arise early on, during Helga’s internal dialogue, when she finally decides to leave Naxos and begins to think about her time there and what she has learned. She points out that one thing she noticed about Negro society was that it “was as complicated and as rigid in its ramifications as the highest strata of white society. If you couldn’t prove your ancestry and connections, you were tolerated, but you didn’t “belong”. You could be queer, or even attractive, or bad, or brilliant, or even love beauty and such nonsense if you were a Rankin, or a Leslie, or a Scoville; in other words, if you had a family. But

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