RUSSIA

Mother Winter by Sophia Shalmiyev

*This book review is part of my “Reading Around the World” Project which you can read about here

I can’t remember for the life of me where I heard about this book, perhaps just while researching “books by Russian women” but I was very excited to discover it. My goal is to mostly not focus on reading books that are about the country and its history, but rather to read stories from people who live and experience different places in an attempt to get a small sense of different countries and the personal stories of those who live (or have lived) there. Sophia was born in Russia and spent the first 11 years of her life there until she moved to the US with her father. I think I am drawn towards cross cultural stories, as may become apparent throughout this book journey. Sophia’s mother suffered from alcoholism and was unreliable, her parents divorced when she was 4 and after she and her father and step mother moved to the US, she lost contact with her mother.

The book is a reflection of Shalmiyev’s journey to motherhood, starting from her own childhood experiences of being mothered. The book is made up of very short vignettes, which are beautiful on their own but when put together they felt chaotic and overwhelming. It was hard to feel grounded in the story (which I is apparently important to me, as a reader) and I had the sense that maybe this was done on purpose, to try to recreate the feeling of disjointed childhood memories, but I felt outside of the story, so it felt more like I was witnessing the chaos instead of experiencing it. I wonder if I should have read it slower and savored each section.

Throughout the book Shalmiyev is frequently found quoting and referencing other authors’ works (too often, in my opinion) and her writing felt heavily influenced by Eileen Myles and Chris Kraus. Similar to how I feel when reading these authors, I felt such a strong desire and expectation to love and be floored by this book, but it just wasn’t there for me. Certain books make me feel stupid and this fell into that camp, along with I Love Dick by Chris Kraus, and the few Eileen Myles books I’ve read. Sometimes these types of books fall flat for me, and I suspect it is a personal failing that keeps me from fully understanding and embracing this type of writing, which I am incapable of describing (probably because I don’t get it, so how can I describe it). Anyways, the references to other authors and quotes from other authors felt heavy handed and took away from the book for me, though perhaps this was a way of Shalmiyev giving tribute to these authors who helped raise her in lieu of her absent mother.

In a way, the whole book is sort of formed around her mother’s absence. I can’t think of a better way to describe it than to say her mother wasn’t actively absent, but more so passively absent, she just wasn’t around. Her story helped to remind me that sometimes an absence is just as influential as someone’s presence is. Overall, I thought it was an interesting look at motherhood, but I was not in love with it. But if you are a Eileen Myles, Chris Kraus, Lidia Yuknavitch fan, I think you may enjoy this one!

CALIFORNIA

There There by Tommy Orange

*This book review is part of my “Reading Around the World” Project which you can read about here

I know what you’re thinking. California is not a country (though maybe it should be?). Let me explain: when my roommate learned I was doing this project she got me a scratch-off world map for me to track my reading. This map happens to show the US state borders on it, so I decided to add to the challenge and read a book from each state. My intention, when reading books from each state, is to try to focus on native authors, since I don’t feel as though I have read enough books by them. Seeing as this is their land, I think I should be more intentional about reading and amplifying their stories. There, There was the Multnomah County Library’s “Everybody Reads” book of 2020, so I picked up a free copy from the library.

There, There, is a collection of vignettes that are all tied together to create one story line. It’s the kind of story I love, one that explores the invisible ways our lives are intertwined with each other in ways we likely will never get to discover. But it’s more than that. It gives voice to an array of Native identities which is important because within white supremacy it is easy for people of color to get pigeon-holed into the stereotypes we, their oppressors have created for them. White supremacy has a way of making anyone who isn’t white feel out of place wherever they are, even on their own land, in the spaces they have built for themselves. It is a system that asks people to either fully embrace their culture or deny it and it creates a culture that doesn’t allow minorities to just exist. White people (particularly hetero, cisgendered white people) have the luxury of creating their own identities without feeling as though they are either fitting into or existing out of the identities that other people have assumed for them.

What I loved about this book is that it was a collection of stories about all different types of people, and while their Native American ancestry and history do tie the characters together, the ways they each identify with their Native identities are all very different. All of this is said with the caveat that I am white as hell. I do believe that the more stories we hear about other people the more we realize that we all have a lot of similarities. Ultimately we all lead beautiful, repetitive, painful, joyful, boring lives. But there is a risk in being reductive when focusing on our similarities. I think this book creates a space for so many different Native identities to exist while acknowledging the ways white supremacy and their native cultures have influenced their existence.

I loved getting to know each of the characters and trying to predict the ways in which their histories/futures were intertwined with one another. I gravitate towards books that are just about people, that study the complexity of joy and heartbreak that is the human condition and I feel this book did just that. If a book doesn’t create empathy, is it really worth reading? I want to absorb all the wonderfully mundane and magical stories of ordinary existence.

QATAR

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Sophia Al-Maria

*This book review is part of my “Reading Around the World” Project which you can read about here

One thing that this book reading “challenge” has reinforced for me is that borders are really a lot of malarkey (as sleepy Joe would say) and that they are some real colonialist, capitalistic bullshit. This observation has almost nothing to do with this book in particular, but is something I have noticed throughout my reading. People and cultures cannot be easily contained and categorized geographically, as it turns out. OK, now about this book in particular. I was excited about this find because it is written by a woman who is roughly within my age range who grew up splitting her time between Washington and Qatar. The story is interesting in itself, but I found the writing fell a little bit flat for me; I always felt as though I was being told the story of her life by someone a few degrees separated from her.

Al-Maria’s origin story is definitely an interesting one. Her father grew up on the Arabian Gulf and ended up applying for school in Washington state. This was a particularly big move as no one in his family had left the region before (and he didn’t seem to have a sense of just how far away he was going). He arrived at SeaTac knowing little to no English, and had to navigate his way around a foreign, racist, country that was completely different from anything he had known, with no assistance. During his early days in Washington he met Gale and they became a couple. Gale quickly got pregnant with Sophia and they got hastily married.

Al-Maria grew up with her mother, as her father returned to the Arabian Gulf when she and her sister were tiny – saying he would send for them when he could. Sophia, her mother, and her sister did briefly move to the Gulf but ended up returning to Washington where they remained until her teenage years. Al-Maria’s mother was caring but paranoid, and tended to be strict with her. Eventually, Gale started to feel as though Sophia was “out of control,” so she was sent to Qatar to stay with her Baba (her father). The rest of the story focuses on her experiences while in Qatar with her father and extended family.

Reading about Al-Maria’s experience bouncing between these two very different cultures made me think a lot about how cultures and countries are discussed. There is a tendency to act as though other cultures are incomprehensibly different from one another. And in a way that is true, but not in the ways people think. I am sure there was some discomfort when she first arrived in Qatar, but she quickly adjusted to living in a house full of extended family in what was, outwardly, a very different environment and situation. Humans are relatively adaptable, able to learn surprisingly quickly how to move through places that feel foreign. I think that significant cultural differences are much more nuanced and hard to put your finger on. The things that seem obviously different are easier to adjust to; we learn to code switch and fit in. In my experience it is the little, nearly indescribable things that cause cross-cultural disconnect. (All this with the caveat that I am not particularly well traveled and do not necessarily have a ton of cross cultural experience).

Almost none of this was touched on in the book, which I actually think is appropriate because the story is not a study in culture: it is a memoir about Al-Maria’s childhood. It truly is an interesting story but I felt outside of it, which made it hard for me to connect. I wanted to know more about her relationships with various family members, to know more about how she felt about her experiences, but she never delved into that. Perhaps this was out of respect for her family, and not wanting to tell stories that were not hers (or only half belonged to her) but it made it difficult to love the book. It was a pretty quick and easy read, so I wouldn’t say to skip it altogether, but I think it left a lot to be desired.