Africans in Russian literature and film

[Irina Rodimtseva]

Soul to Soul: A Black Russian American Family 1865-1992 Yelena Khanga (Author), Susan Jacoby (Author) 

>From Publishers Weekly
With freelance writer Jacoby, Russian journalist Khanga offers a competent account of an unusual heritage. Her maternal grandparents were American Communists who in 1931 moved from New York City to Soviet Uzbekistan to develop a cotton industry: her grandfather, Oliver Golden, was black and the son of a slave; and her grandmother, Warsaw-born Bertha Bialek Golden, was the Jewish daughter of a Hebrew-school teacher and garment worker. Khanga's mother, Lily Golden, became the first scholar at the African Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which Khrushchev created at the suggestion of Golden family friend W.E.B. Du Bois. Khanga's father, Abdullah, was an African independence leader who treated Lily like a traditional Muslim wife, locking her inside the home when he went out; in 1965 he was assassinated by political opponents in his native Zanzibar. Khanga describes the pitfalls of growing up in white, anti-American Soviet society, her reporting stints at a Moscow News revolutionized by glasnost and her work as an exchange journalist at the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. In America, she travels the country and finds her Bialek and Golden relatives. She is opinionated about American racism and reactions to African Americans, but, given her dual heritage, her treatments of African American anti-Semitism and American Jewry are curiously cursory. Photos not seen by PW. 
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. 

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: John Lyles 
  To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu 
  Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 14:44
  Subject: [SEELANGS] Africans in Russian literature and film


  Dear Colleagues,


  Some of my students are doing a research project on the depiction of Africans in Russian literature and film, as well as their treatment by society (I realize the enormous nature of this task, but I am hoping they will begin to scratch the surface of it and perhaps remain interested in minority depictions and treatment in Russia after the class).  I have given them a few places to begin, but I was wondering if any of you knew off the top of your head some good sources.  I have already pointed them to Circus and Pushkin, as well as many works of Socialist Realism, but are there any others that you know of that would be good sources?  I am thinking in particular of a documentary about Pushkin and Jim Patterson, but I can't remember the name of it.  Thanks for any help you can give!


  Sincerely,
  John Lyles
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