Experience Russian Tattoo: A Memoir Sketched By Elena Gorokhova Exhibited In Leaflet

Tattoo” by Elena Gorokhova, published by Simon and Schuster,

Category Memoir Publication Date January,

If its a memoir you are looking for be sure to put this on your must read list.


Elena is living with her mother in St, Petersburg, Russia. Their conditions are typical of thes Russian economy, They are living in subpar housing and spending a large amount of their time waiting in line for food and clothing.
She meets Robert, an American exchange student who offers her a way out of Russia, She agrees to marry him but he tells her that it is in name only and that he still wants his freedom.
Elena lives with him in Texas and is astounded by the material wealth of the United States, She also has problems assimilating into her new life as Robert offers no assistance in fact, he becomes disgusted with her and sends her to live with his mother in New Jersey.
It is here that she meets her true love and divorces Robert, who realizes his mistake but too late, Elena goes on to live a good life with her new husband, She finds a job teaching English as a Second Language and becomes a part of her new world, They buy a house and have a daughter, Things are going so well that she is able to bring her mother over from Russia, This does cause some problems in that they were never close and it seems that mother was always getting in the way and free with old country advice.
Some of Elenas past comes back to haunt her in her daughter, Sasha has a mind and will of her own and balks at the things Elena thinks she should be doing.
For instance, she drops out of college, joins a group protesting the inhumane treatment of animals, and purchases a firearm.


A wonderful story that spans over the lifetime of three generations of women that are independent with a definite different item of cultural values, and a determination to have their way.

Very boring Thank you to Simon amp Schuster and Netgalley for giving me access to a free copy of Russian Tattoo.
I have a real fascination with Eastern Europe especially theth century and earlyst so I am surprised that I missed Gorokhova's first memoir about her childhood and early years in the Soviet Union.
Based on this book, I will definitely be looking for it, In Russian Tattoo, Gorokhova's speaks so frankly about her early years in New Jersey and Texas after immigrating from the Soviet Union in the earlys.
Through sometimes humorous and always straightforward prose, she really creates a very vivid picture of her sense of dislocation and utter bemusement at life in the US.
The most simple things how to eat a hamburger for example are a source of confusion, As the book moves into Gorokhova's more recent years, with the exception of her relationship with her mother, her story feels a bit more guarded.
This is understandable, given that this is a memoir and she no doubt feels a need to protect the privacy of her close relatives her husband, daughter and sister.
But the side effect of Gorokhova's respect for her family, is that the book becomes a little less engaging in the second half because it feels that there is quite a bit that is left unsaid.
But this is a minor flaw, In the end, I really liked this book and Gorokhova, She is smart, funny, selfdeprecating and full of recognizable emotions about her mother and her daughter and the mixed emotions of adopting a new country as home.
Lovely book and highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the Soviet Union and the immigrant experience, And now I have to find her first book, . . Amazing journey into the Russian mind, The culture, character and customs are woven into everything Elena does, but yet she continues to try and separate from her roots.
Fascinating, honest and something we as former immigrants can all relate to,
Amazing memoir. So much color in such austerity, I will write more later I received a free ARC from Simon amp Schuster through the Firstreads program,
Once Id started reading Russian Tattoo, I could not stop, This is a wonderful book, As a more recent immigrant from Asia, I found something in common and this book truly touched my heart, I enjoyed Elena Gorokhovas writing, I will certainly read her first memoir A Mountain of Crumbs as well,
In Chekhov's "Three Sisters" the sisters dream of escaping their dreary life in the provinces and returning to Moscow but at the end of the play they are still trapped in their dreary little town with all of their dreams fading.
They may even be finished with wringing their hands at their fate, Irina, a school teacher. says, "I'll teach I'll work, work . " Such is the life that Elena Gorokhova imagines for herself if she cannot escape Russia, But she does escape. Kind of.

Gorokhova is also a teacher, She lives in Leningrad now St, Petersburg once again and, among other things, teaches a sixweek Russian immersion program for American students at Leningrad University, It's the earlys. At the university she meets Robert, a student who offers to marry her so that she can get a green card and come to live in America.
Robert is working on his Ph D, in Physics at the University of Texas, He is entirely at home there although he grew up in New Jersey and is no longer dependent upon Elena in the way he was in Leningrad and no longer finds her foreign ways charming.
In fact he can't understand why she can't do simple things such as shop for groceries or for shoes, She is overwhelmed at the choices American shoppers have, In Russia, there were two choices at the most, Shopping was easy. Quality was poor. The choice was kind of pointless anyway, Robert offered her an "open marriage" when he proposed, She had never heard of such an arrangement and it stabbed at her heart, but she was desperate to escape to America.
"Russian Tattoo" is an immigrant's story, A story that's both very funny and very revealing of an immigrant's bewilderment of all things American,

But it's also very much a story about motherdaughter relationships, Elena's desperation to escape Russia is part and parcel of her desperation to escape her mother, who is almost entirely a standin for the motherland.
Her mother is fierce, dominating, overbearing, controlling, and protective and nurturing, And she is certain that Elena will come to some bad end in America, She tries to direct Elena's life from afar but when Elena has a daughter of her own, she comes to help Elena take care of her first grandchild.
She never leaves. She never learns English. She wants her granddaughter to know all things Russian, She can't stand the waste she witnesses in her daughter and soninlaw's household, In short, she still tries to control her daughter's life, But as Elena's daughter grows up, Elena sees the same fierce stubbornness in her daughter as in herself and in her mother.


Elena returns to Russia almost every year for a visit, Her best friends still live there, Russia remains in her soul, Russia is tattooed on her heart as permanently as the tattoo that her teenaged American daughter gets on her arm.
There really was no total escape, Sliced hearts do not become whole, she discovers,

Some readers found Gorokhova's memoir depressing they fault her for not being happier, But what do they expect She is Russian! Haven't they ever read Chekhov Other than Soviet propaganda, name me a Russian story that is defined by unmitigated happiness.
Or, forget the unmitigated. I learned a word I had always been searching for in trying to define Chekhov's stories, Elena talks about "toska. " Toska, she says is "a combination of melancholy and longing, A deep sadness and an awareness that something has been lost, . . things deeply submerged under the layers of silt on the soft bottom of the Russian soul, " Yes! that is Chekhov. And that is Elena Gorokhova's memoir, But it's also funny and tender and witty, She is a wonderful writer, I loved this book. I read "A Mountain of Crumbs", by Elena Gorokhova when it first came out in, I still own the book, I LOVED READING IT. I LOVE THIS BOOK, too!!!!!!

It was a wonderful reading Elena again, I didn't realize this was a follow up sequelmemoir to "A Mountain of Crumbs", All these years I had thought "The Russian Tattoo" was a novel, I knew I wanted to read it years ago when I first heard about it, but it slipped away in the way books do sometimes,

The other day I found this BRAND NEW HARD COPY, . . with this gorgeous book cover in my thrift store for,

With the first paragraph of chapter one, I knew I was back in good hands with Elena telling a story.
. Her Story! I was smiling ear to ear inside and out as I began reading,

"I wish I could clear my mind and focus on my imminent American future, I am twelve kilometers up in the air,feet, according to their new nonmetric system I have yet to learn.
Every time I glance at the overhead television screen that shows the position of my Aeroflot flight, this future is getting closer.
The miniature airplane is like a needle over the Atlantic, stitching the two hemispheres together with the thread of our route.
I wish I could get ready and dredge my mind of all the silt I have my previous life, But I can't. I can't help but think of my mothers crumbled face back in Leningrad airport, or her gaze, open like a fresh wound, of her smells of the apple jam from our dacha mixed with the sharp odor of formaldehyde she'd brought home from the medical School where she teaches anatomy.
I can't help but think of my sister Marina's tight embrace and her hair the color of apricots, one fruit that had failed to grow in our dacha garden my grandfather planted.
Ten hours earlier, I said goodbye to both of them",

In Elena's first book, Elena wrote about her childhood in Russia, She was living in the United States an adult immigrant'looking back' at her past, . . giving us the readers a great daytoday experience of what it was like growing up in Russia, It was funny and sad and sooooo good!!

In this second book Elena is looking back AGAIN, This time she is looking back at her
years of living in the United States starting from the first day she arrived at agemeeting her American husband Robert whom she barely knew.
She married him for a green card, Ha, THAT ARRANGEMENT is no longer easy to do,

Many parts of this book are FUNNY, I'm not a fan of American Fast Food Joints where we eat our food out of paper containers nor am I a fan of the food but boy it's sure a kick of laughs when Elena eats at one for the first time.
Other parts are sad and touching and just so 'human' and inspiring,

So we take a journey with Elena, as she finds her way around America, She begins with a marriage of convenience with Robert, LOTS OF ENJOYABLE STORYTELLING from buying a pair of tennis shoes to taking the bus crappy jobs etc, From Austin to New Jersey a divorce with Robert, . .
A new marriage with Andy, 'for love this time' .
The birth of Sasha,
Elena's mother coming from Leningrad when Sasha is born, and never returns.
A journey with Sasha, . from baby pre teen young adult college etc,

Having just finished reading the fabulous graphic memoir "The Best We Could Do", by Thi Bui, I recognized the once again that SPECIAL COMPLEXITY amp LOVE betweenwomen ofgenerations within the family: MOM Daughter GRANDMOTHER and how each experience being a mixture of TWO COUNTRIES.
. . each has a different perspective,

Sasha was born in America, Elena taught her the Russian languagewanting her to be Bilingual, After all Elena 'was' a language teacher,
But as Sasha was coming into her late teens we recognized teenage rebellion she wants nothing to do with her mother's RUSSIAN ANYTHING.


AS LONG AS THIS IS NOT YOUR CHILD, you might laugh:
Sasha nowyear old was arrested in Niman Marcus for stealing a pair of jeans that were.

The dialogue is funny for the next few pages as I say as long as it's not your daughter.

Dad, Andy, says "This is it, DON'T say a word, not a single word, You are going with us next week, Do you understand, young lady You're going to Paris!"

Elena says, . . "I know how ridiculous this must sound to a stranger, Our daughters punishment for shoplifting, a trip to Paris",

Towards the end of this story I felt a little teary,

This book was a great 'companion completion' to Elena's Russian and American self,
The Russian in her is for her mother and sister, The American in her is for her husband and daughter,

I HOPE ELENA WRITES ANOTHER BOOK, . 'ANYTHING'. I'll read it!!!!

Soooooooo ENJOYABLE! Highly recommended!



I can't remember where I heard about this book but am so glad I picked it up because it was wonderful! This is a memoir, beginning with the author's immigration from the U.
S. S. R. to the U. S. after marrying an American she'd known for a short time, Having never experienced life outside a communist country, she had no idea what to expect or how to act and was completely bewildered in some respects, despite speaking English.
This book chronicles moments in her life after her immigration, focusing on complicated family relationships and the way Russian and the U.
S. S. R made a lasting impact on her life,

This book was

beautifully written in first person present tense, The writing kept me hooked on the story, as if I was watching it all unfold in front of me.
The difficulties she encountered were understandable, and it was fascinating to read about her struggles and frustrations in the new country while also recognizing that she didn't really want to go back to Leningrad and instead was simply remembering its charm from a distance.


I enjoyed the author's commentary about the life she'd left behind and the way the people she'd left behind were struggling to get by, and I also thought she did a magnificent job describing how complicated family relationships are, with her immigration fueled in part by a desire to put space between herself and her family.
. . and then members of her family ultimately followed and also struggled to adapt to American life, I think she captured perfectly how hard it is to immerse yourself in a new culture, despite the best of intentions, because so much is so foreign.
Her family relationships changed over the years, and I loved the depictions of how her relationship with her own mother somewhat mirrored, years later, her relationship with her own daughter.
It was interesting because it wasn't just the usual mother/daughter issues but problems that also stemmed from the cultural differences between each generation.
Really fascinating and extremely well written!

I had a really hard time putting this book down and thought it was just excellent overall.
Perhaps not for everyone, since there's not necessarily a "big accomplishment" or something that the author ever describes this is simply a memoir about complicated family relationships and cultural shifts.
But the descriptions of the two countries are great, and the family relationships depicted in here were incredibly well done.
A great read overall!.