Читать книгу My 20+ Years In America - Tatiana Shymanova - Страница 2

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 20^th century, the intertwining narratives and circumstances of the marginalized that shaped our society today.

But, throughout it all, Ms. Shimanova stays true to herself, true to her own truth, if you will. Beyond the evocativeness of the writing and the nuance of the characters, the clear honesty of the hand penning these pages shines through, underpins every word, like confession, or salvation. This is the true task of the autobiographer— and Tatyana Shimanova has achieved this arduous task with flying colors.

– Charles Asher, PBK Reviews