Laughing Through Tears:

A Round Up of Funny, Soviet-Jewish Books to Read While The World is on Fire

by: Alina Adams

The world is on fire. And what do Jews do when the world is on fire? Jews pray. Jews raise money. Jews march. Jews fight back. And Jews… laugh.

At least, that’s what I grew up believing. I was born in the former Soviet Union. In Odessa, USSR, in point of fact. Odessa Jews pride themselves on laughing. Especially when there is little to laugh about. (Did you hear the one about Abramovich…)

My family arrived in the United States in 1977. Growing up in San Francisco, CA, I read a lot of books where the protagonists were Jewish immigrants to the US from pre-revolutionary Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, etc… There was nothing from those who managed to escape afterwards. 

But now my generation, the one that left the Soviet Union, not the Pale of Settlement, is finally old enough to tell our stories. And many of us are choosing to do it the quintessential Jewish way: With laughter through tears.

While there is no question that Gary Shteyngart, starting with The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and moving through Absurdistan and the autobiographical Little Failure, kicked off the genre, I have to admit: I never quite got him. To me, it felt like those early books of his (I never read any of the subsequent ones) were a list of weird things Soviet Jews did, so that readers could laugh at them. I prefer stories where you laugh with the characters. Especially about those weird things that Soviet Jews do. Maybe it was because his narrators were men, and our experiences were markedly different. Maybe it was because the stories included a deep strain of self-pity, which I’ve never enjoyed. I like tales of people who rise above their unfortunate circumstances, not wallow in them. Maybe that’s a female thing.

Which is why my list of Soviet-Jewish books to read during troubled times include the following, all by women:

• Oksana, Behave! by Maria Kuznetsova. There is a tendency, in both fiction and non-fiction, to infantilize immigrants, as well as to turn them into saints. As if the process of becoming an immigrant keeps you from being a well-rounded human being, with noble impulses alongside selfish ones. Now, while it is true that trying to make oneself understood in a foreign language does tend to produce child-like sentences, it does not mean that the people behind those sentences are as innocent or simple as children. In Oksana, Behave! neither the immigrant in question, Oksana, nor any of her relatives are innocent, pure, or sexless. Which makes reading the book a much more entertaining experience. 

• Mother Country by Irina Reyn. In Oksana, Behave!, we follow the heroine as she grows up, from the USSR to the US. In Mother Country, the heroine Nadia is already a “woman of a certain age.” One who has lived and suffered through the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and is now trying to piece together a life in the United States at the same time as she fights to reunite with her grown daughter. And yet Nadia is also a well-rounded person. She gets angry. She gets frustrated. She gets horny. And she gets sarcastic. Which makes spending time with her worth the effort.

• The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield by Anna Fishbeyn. There is a certain path immigrant children are supposed to follow. First, you move into a community where everyone is exactly like you. You work hard at school. You go to college. You get certified in a lucrative, yet respectable profession. You marry someone from a community exactly like yours, who is also in a lucrative, respectable profession. You move into a community exactly like yours. You have children whom you raise in a community exactly like yours to follow a path exactly like yours. Being born in America doesn’t mean you’re allowed to plan your own life, like one of those uncouth, disrespectful Americans. This book is what happens when the heroine tries.

• Divide Me By Zero by Lara Vapnyar. I was one of those immigrant children who dared plan my own life, just like an uncouth, disrespectful American. Chief among my sins was my disinterest in math, followed by my utter inability to understand math. (I suspect a strong correlation.) I married someone who could do math. Alas, he was not from a community exactly like mine. However, he did come in handy when I was reading Divide Me By Zero, so he could explain all the ways in which math was used in this story to express lasting, passionate, and all-encompassing love. I did not know I needed the math equations of love in my life. I was wrong. And this book was what I needed to prove that.

Honorable Mention: Non-Fiction Titles by Soviet Jewish Women

• Parenting with an Accent by Masha Rumer. That man I married who could do math but wasn’t from a community exactly like mine also had the audacity not to speak Russian. So when it came to teaching our three children the language, we ended up with a hodge-podge of half-hearted attempts, compromise, resistance, and an older son who spent a year in Moldova to learn what I had failed to effectively teach him. Rumer’s book chronicles families like mine, as well as dozens of other examples, where simply teaching a heritage language proves to be not at all simple, when tradition, culture, and trauma are all added to the mix. And yet, you’re going to laugh!

• The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays by Irena Smith. So remember the work hard at school, go to college, get certified in a lucrative, yet respectable profession edict from a few paragraphs ago? What happens when you go ahead and diligently do that? And it doesn’t work out? What happens then? Well, you pivot and start telling other people how to make their children successful. While struggling to do the same with your own. That’s pretty funny. And so is this book.

These are my favorite Soviet-Jewish fiction and non-fiction titles? What do you have to add to this list? Tell us in the Comments!

---

Find the books mentioned in this post:

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Absurdistan: GoodReads | Bookshop | Amazon

Little Failure: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Oksana, Behave! : Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Mother Country: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Divide Me By Zero: Goodreads |Bookshop | Amazon

Parenting With An Accent: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

The Golden Ticket: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

---