Volume 51, Number 14 · September 23, 2004
New World Blues
By Elaine Blair
Natasha and Other Stories
by David Bezmozgis
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 147 pp., $18.00
For much of the twentieth century, Russians, especially those living in cities, tended to have small families. Even during the relative political and economic stability of the Brezhnev era, space and food and goods remained scarce. Many families had only one child, few had more than two, and even those two were often separated by seven or eight years for the same practical reasons. And so, when Soviet Jews began emigrating to North America in the 1970s, they brought with them what was, essentially, a generation of only children. Most of these children arrived badly dressed, in East Bloc clothes that were eight to ten years behind the current fashion. At school their lack of English made them serious and shy. The first in their families to pick up the language, they had an early sense of responsibility for their parents. As in most immigrant families, the parents spoke often of the possibilities awaiting their lucky American-raised children, and they expected the children to take advantage of them. In Russian families, however, this job fell entirely to the one child.
Review, 3039 words
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