Graphic Memoirs and Novels of Soviet Trauma

I didn’t grow up reading graphic novels. Back in the USSR and Russia comics did not exist as a genre. To this day, some of my contemporaries from that part of the world might occasionally dismiss the whole field of graphic literature as meant only for children. But as time goes on, this genre has been asserting itself within the field of literary studies and has been taken up by an ever-increasing number of creators from the countries of the former USSR and diaspora. It’s become a vibrant source of nuanced, memorable narratives. Many contemporary artists and writers are turning to graphic forms of storytelling to explore creative possibilities that the form has to offer.

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Yevgenia Nayberg’s I Hate Borsch! (Eerdmans, 2022): A Way to Benefit Ukraine

Yevgenia Nayberg is the author and illustrator of several imaginative and visually stunning children’s books. In Anya’s Secret Society, a Russian immigrant girl who loves to draw discovers that, unlike where she came from, being left-handed is perfectly acceptable in America (left-handedness was considered in need of pointed correction in the Soviet Union, as my maternal grandfather could have attested to). Typewriter is the story of, well, a Russian typewriter brought to America and then abandoned by its owner, that finds a new home in the end. I particularly appreciate these children’s books because as far as I know, they’re the only ones that feature immigrant protagonists from the former Soviet Union. Nayberg’s latest book is I Hate Borsch! (what?! Who can possibly hate borsch?!), about a girl who, indeed, can’t stand the stuff but has a change of heart after emigrating from Ukraine to the U.S. The book includes Nayberg’s recipe for the (absolutely delicious) dish. And given several recent Twitter threads in which native Russian speakers expressed dismay at being told that they don’t spell its name correctly in English, I Hate Borsch! spells it exactly as it should be (for fans of Library of Congress transliteration, “borshch” is also acceptable, and no other spellings are).

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