Russian Emigrant Culture in North America

[Furman, Yelena]

To reiterate some items and to add some new ones:

I second the suggestion of Ulitskaia's The Funeral Party as an example of Russians writing about America.
As far as Russian-American writers - i.e., Russian immigrants who live in the US (or Canada) and write in English, in addition to the names already mentioned -- Vapnyar, Budman, Ulinich, Idov, Bezmozgis, and obviously many of them have several works -- there is also:

Ellen Litman, The Last Chicken in America
Sana Krasikov, One More Year
Irina Reyn, What Happened to Anna K.
Gary Shteyngart, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, Super Sad True Love Story
Olga Grushin, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, The Line (somewhat different from all the above, since she's not a Russian-Jewish immigrant)

For critical sources, Adrian Wanner's Out of Russia is so far the only monograph - and an excellent one - that deals with this subject at length.
I also organized a special issue of Slavic and East European Journal dealing with contemporary Russian-American fiction (55.1): 2011.

Hope that helps.
Best, Yelena Furman
________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] on behalf of Ellen Elias-Bursac [eliasbursac at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2012 9:11 AM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Russian Emigrant Culture in North America

A recent novel is David Bezmosgis The Free World.

On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 8:51 AM, Sasha Senderovich <sasha.senderovich at gmail.com<mailto:sasha.senderovich at gmail.com>> wrote:
Some more or less obvious texts that come to mind (assuming that you need texts that are available in English):

- Joseph Brodsky's essays
- novels and stories of Sergei Dovlatov
- Ludmila Ulitskaya's The Funeral Party
- Eduard Limonov, It's Me, Eddie

A few recent critical studies come to mind, too: Adrian Wanner just published a book on this topic, Out of Russia: Fictions of a New Translingual Diaspora; Sanna Turoma's Brodsky Abroad; there was a volume of Slavic and East European Journal a couple of years ago devoted to the subject that had very good articles on topics like New York in emigre Russian writing, etc.

There's more: this is just off the top of my head.


On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 7:14 PM, Ines Garcia de la Puente <inesgdlp8mrta at yahoo.ca<mailto:inesgdlp8mrta at yahoo.ca>> wrote:

Dear SEELANGSers,

I am preparing a course on Russian emigrant culture in North America, and I am having some trouble finding relevant materials.

So far, in my list are Vera Kishinevsky's Russian Immigrants in the United States, the last chapter of John Glad's Russian Abroad, and some Russian (Jewish)-American fiction (Lara Vapnyar, Mark Budman, Anya Ulinich, Michael Idov etc.)

I would be thankful for any suggestions anyone might have: monographs, articles, movies, documentaries...

Please reply off-line to inesgdlp8mrta at yahoo.ca<mailto:inesgdlp8mrta at yahoo.ca>

Thank you,

Ines Garcia

Ines Garcia de la Puente
University of St.Gallen
Switzerland

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