Tag: diaspora

Review: Olga Zilberbourg’s “Like Water and Other Stories”

~ Yelena Furman ~ 1 Comment

“The thread connecting these tales is each protagonist’s attempt to come to terms with an identity that is always in flux, transitioning between various contexts such as emigration, motherhood, partnership, and employment. For this reason, bicultural readers of varied backgrounds will likely hear their own experiences resonating with this collection.”

Anna Kasradze reviews Olga Zilberbourg’s debut collection in The Moscow Times:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/24/olga-zilberbourgs-like-water-and-other-stories-a66997

“An eternal vagabond of life and the idea” #victorserge @nyrbclassics

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

kaggsysbookishramblings's avatarKaggsy's Bookish Ramblings

Notebooks 1936-1947 by Victor Serge
Translated by Mitchell Abidor and Richard Greeman

As I’ve mentioned on the Ramblings (and on any kind of social media I happen to be near!), I’ve been rather absorbed in the Notebooks of Victor Serge over the past couple of weeks. The very wonderful NYRB Classics seem to fly the flag for him; several of his novels and his “Memoirs of Revolutionary” are available in their imprint (and I’ve read most of them…) However, this volume really is something special, and I’ll share some thoughts on it below – though I fear these will not really do the book justice. I’m sorry – this is going to be a long post!

The Notebooks

Serge’s real name was Victor Lvovich Kibalchich and he was born in Brussels to Russian parents. His life was a peripatetic one, moving from place to place – France, Spain, Russia to…

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The Cheburashka Collective: New poetry of the post-Soviet diaspora

~ Yelena Furman ~ Leave a comment

“The Cheburashka Collective is a group of women and non-binary writers whose identity has been shaped by immigration from the Soviet Union to the United States. On April 27, 2019, six members of the group, which is named for a beloved Soviet cartoon character, gathered in Philadelphia’s Penn Book Center for a poetry reading. Meduza in English news editor Hilah Kohen sat down with five of those poets before the event. They discussed what shared immigrant experiences can do for collectives, what collectivity can do for poetry, and what poetry can do for our world today. The “Cheburashki” also shared seven of their recent poems, which are reprinted below this interview with the kind permission of their publishers.”

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/04/29/the-cheburashka-collective-new-poetry-of-the-post-soviet-diaspora

Olga Livshin’s A Life Replaced

~ Yelena Furman ~ 2 Comments

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Olga Livshin’s A Life Replaced

The poet and translator Olga Livshin has published a new book, A Life Replaced, that includes both her original writing, and new translations of the work of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, as well as writing by a more recent poet, Vladimir Gandelsman. 

What makes this collection unique is that Livshin, who spent her childhood in the former Soviet Union and has since lived in the United States, engages energetically and creatively with the two poets she translates and with the countries she has lived in, asking thought-provoking questions about a range of topics.

http://zackrogow.blogspot.com/