Summary

Exile begins with the unidentified narrators' made-up memory of their father telling them about freedom and democracy on the deck of a ship. This memory never happened, however, and they refer to it as a "myth" (45). They go over other memories: their mother straightening her hair with an iron and later uncorking a champagne bottle, the various bars nearby, and the high school teachers who flirted and gossiped downtown. These are memories that they have made in America, somewhere near US Route 12. They wanted to find "Jews" or some sort of northern European ethnicity, and they told an American boy that where they are from "the greatest achievement is to leave" (45).

They all work "clerical, semiskilled, and service jobs," but pretend that they are famous and powerful (45). They tell more memories; in the first, they hide in the backseat of a Pontiac as...