Tradition? Legacy?

Dear Helga Crane and/or Narrator,

The simultaneous sentiment and disdain you have for staying in America, specifically Harlem, New York, makes sense. The United States of America was structured to oppress you, treat African American women like yourself as the mule of the world. The United States of America, Harlem in particular, is also home to you, so you have a complex relationship with your country. I do too. I have feelings of patriotism while having strong reproach. Although I have never actually "lived," outside of the States I sympathize with the need to shuttle yourself  "from continent to continent, from the prejudiced restrictions of the New World to the easy formality of the Old, from pale calm Copenhagen to the colorful lure of Harlem." This seems like an ideal way to live if you're African American and have their resources to do so. You can escape a little, and still return to the heritage, dichotomy, and "colorful lure of Harlem."

You seemed to cling the legacy and tradition of blackness that resided in Harlem. But after childbearing crushed your soul, you disregard the legacy and tradition of black people praising the "white man's God." It sounds foolish, but I have rationalize it as African American practicing Christianity because generations of their family did so. The religion became less of a tool of oppression and more a unique religion in Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches. Could the ten million black folk of your time be so deluded if  they were really repurposing the religion for their own people?

I'm unsure about all of this. I feel like I agree with your disbelief in "the white man's God" more than anything especially because the townswomen in Alabama threw "sweet promises of mansions in the sky by and by" to make you feel better about real world suffering. I see the blunted perceptions within congregations, but it seems disrespectful and blasphemous to even say such things. It would discredit the fervor of very religious African Americans to say such things. It may even alienate the speaker. Helga, you may have been driven to such conclusions because your traumatic experiences, but your boldness in denouncing religion is somewhat admirable.