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Clarion Review
My 20+ Years In America. Based on a true story
Summary
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Epilogue
In the West, today, the popular imagination has bent Eastern Europe into a barbarous, backwards swath of contested land forever haunted by the histories of the Soviet Bloc. But these geographies hold homes, hold loves, hold lives; no matter the pain or torments, countries like Ukraine and Siberia were and are the scenes of childhood— replete with all the joys and grief of existence itself. Tatyana Shimanova’s autobiographical novel, My 20+ Years In America, paints this dynamic picture, placing her homeland front and center and subjecting it to both leveled criticism and beautiful nostalgia, creating a melancholic and moving narrative out of her own struggles and successes.
My 20+ Years In America trembles with arresting prose, thoughtful meditations, and a universality essential to any and all autobiographies. The specificities of time and place allow for lush detail and a poetic verisimilitude, but the essence of Ms. Shimanova’s story is as primal as any bildungsroman— from Goethe to Sedaris. My 20+ Years In America, however, with its pertinence to the current global stage, functions just as well as a contemporary allegory, as a humanizing symbol of the ontology of the late 20th century, the intertwining narratives and circumstances of the marginalized that shaped our society today.
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There were very few people in the town who had working telephones in their home, so it took quite some time for Vano’s girlfriend to find a telephone and call an ambulance. Despite the ambulance, Vano’s injuries proved to be too great, and he died on the way to the hospital. He only had enough strength left to tell the paramedics that he had never met anyone from that group before. His single mother worked so hard to bring up her three sons, and she lost two of her boys. Vano’s oldest brother had been killed two years earlier. He was a talented artist. No one was ever charged with those crimes.
Ironically, Vano was killed next to the school of music, the dearest place in the entire town to Tonya. When Tonya used to sneak out to the school of music, she had been sure that nobody knew about her secret practice sessions, but one day Vano’s friend had come to Tonya during a class break and asked her, “Why don’t you ever come to the dance? Vano is always very sad about it. Don’t you notice at all that he is in love with you?”
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