Emily Hahn

From Philosopedia

Hahn, Emily (14 January 1905 - 18 February 1997)

A mining engineer, a research physicist, and a worker with the Red Cross who had been in the Belgian Congo, Hahn was an early feminist, the author of more than 200 articles for The New Yorker as well as fifty-four books, including Hongkong Holiday (1946), England to Me (1949), Love Conquers Nothing (1952), and Once Upon a Pedestal (1974).

In 1924 she traveled across the country in a Model T Ford, and The New Yorker published some of her experiences. In 1930, she wrote Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction—A Beginner’s Handbook, a work containing her radical ideas about romance.

In 1930, inspired by Charles A. Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic, she went alone to Africa where she worked in a hospital and lived with a tribe of Pygmies.

In 1935, as The New Yorker’s correspondent in China, she met Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai, becoming a confidante of the Soong sisters (one of whom married Sun Yat-sen and the other Chiang Kai-shek), writing The Soong Sisters in 1941.

While in China, Hahn had an affair with Sinmay Zau, spent time in opium dens, and became addicted to the drug.

• I was young and I thought it was romantic to smoke opium. I was quite determined. It took me a year or so to become addicted, but I kept at it.

Later, a hypnotist cured her of the habit.

In Hong Kong, she met the married Major Charles R. Boxer, a British intelligence officer, with whom she had a daughter [Carola Boxer Vecchi], proudly proclaiming the event at a time when illegitimacy was quite frowned upon. When the major was imprisoned by the Japanese, she brought food to him in the prison and avoided repatriation by saying she was Eurasian. Eventually interned, she was sent back to the United States on the Gripsholm in 1943. In 1945, she and the major married and had a second child, Amanda.

In 1992, of humanism she wrote Warren Allen Smith:

I am no philosopher, but I seem to be on the side of most writers in opting for secular humanism, despite an uneasy feeling that I am not quite sure about humanism in general. Humans are not my favorite species, but I’m stuck with them.

As a follow-up, in an interview at her New Yorker office on New York City's 42nd Street, Smith remarked about the photos of apes that were pinned on the walls. Yes, she said, she preferred apes to humans and wish she could have some in her back yard where she lived near 14th Street. Not enough room, she said, but she had room where she lived in England. She talked easily about any subject, including the homosexuality of one of her close relatives, and she gave a sample of how a gibbon sounds. In her 80s, she wrote Eve and the Apes (1988).

Her father, she said, had been an atheist and an admirer of Robert G. Ingersoll:

Daddy took Ingersoll’s agnosticism hard. He really took it hard. He read to us out of the Bible to show us how silly the book was. In our village church in England, for I live there much of the time, my husband and I took our older daughter who was very religious and wanted to go to some Christmas or holiday service. And the vicar said, “Hello, Major Boxer, we don’t see much of you.” And my husband said, “No, you don’t. My wife is an agnostic, and I am an atheist. We came for the child.”

Laughing, she noted that only a small percentage of the English attend church any more. “Might this be an argument for disestablishmentarianism?” she was asked. “Yes,” she retorted, “they should ‘dis’ a lot of stuff!”

She also said that on Sunday mornings instead of taking her to Sunday School, her dad would sit her on his knee and read from the Bible. The world created in a week, he'd laugh? Jesus walking on water, he'd laugh? Jonah getting swallowed, he'd laugh? She started out thinking the Bible was a collection of funny stories. And, she laughed, that was the funniest of all!

Hahn, who became a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters, is best known for her collection of stories, Times and Places (1970) In it was a story, “I Say This,” about the plight of a Congolese woman she once met. Told she might be able to improve her lot, the woman had replied with the Kingwana word denoting skepticism, “Wapi,” or “Sez you!” Some day in the future, Hahn had tried to convince the woman, females in Africa will be much better off and they should work toward that goal. “Someday, you will have power to decide for yourself about everything,” Hahn had advised. The woman had listened intently, her eyes looking downward. She then looked up. “Lady,” she ejaculated, “Wapi!”

Correspondence

{WAS, 12 June 1992; WAS, 1996; Free Inquiry, Winter 1995-1996}