Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter: A Memoir From the Child of a Mail-Order Bride

by Katya Suvorova

In this darkly funny and irreverent memoir, the daughter of a mail-order bride unpacks her undocumented childhood in America.

The perfect read for fans of the jaw-dropping twists of 90 Day Fiancé and the emotional gut punch of I'm Glad My Mom Died.

Growing up undocumented in Houston, Texas, Katya Suvorova learned that keeping her family together meant dodging the police, enduring her mother’s many husbands, and baby-sitting her younger sister instead of finishing the third grade.

Her understanding of her life shifted dramatically at seventeen, when Katya discovered her mother’s advertisement in a forgotten Eastern European mail-order bride catalogue from the 1990s. As she grew older, Katya came to better understand what her mother had risked when she smuggled herself and her then three-year-old daughter from Russia into the US. 

When your parents sacrifice their lives so yours can be better, to whom do you owe your future?

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter explores difficult questions and stories both shocking and hilarious across Katya’s childhood through to an adulthood estranged from the woman who sacrificed everything for her. Her sharp, dry wit engages readers in a deeply relatable take on the experience of being a child of immigrants and unraveling a landscape of family secrets and lies, sharing her unique story of being the undocumented daughter of a mail-order bride.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Biography, Immigration, Biography Memoir, Adult

352 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2026

About the author

Raised as an undocumented immigrant in Texas, Katya Suvorova (she/her) is now a US citizen writing from abroad. Her work is powered by strong coffee courtesy of her husband’s amateur barista phase, a cat so unruly she once earned a spot on the no-fly list, and a three-legged dog who moves through the world like she has five legs and no regrets. Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter is her debut memoir.

Reviews

[Mariethethird]

The daughter of a mail order bride recounts growing up in the US as her mother, desperate for a green card, marries one abusive man after another.

My heart aches for Katya, the child that never got to be a child. She’s treated as an adult, left on her own from a very young age, and when she has a sister she’s left taking care of the sister. And it’s not just babysitting we’re talking about here. It’s cooking, cleaning, nurturing, protecting and teaching. All the things a mother should be doing, but that the mother never did. This also includes being a wife to an abusive husband. (Trigger warning!)

The book shows us OCD from a young age and how a child is affected by constant conditional love. The pursuit of a green card, more important than anything else.
I understand it, and still I don’t, and I think I have that in common with Katya. The American dream (mine is the Nordic utopia) leaves out some important things. Family, culture, language and friends are cast aside for the promise of something better. In our new home we’re torn between feeling grateful for the opportunity everyone else at home dreams about, yet missing “home” immensely. The other side is lonely.
But we find solace along the way, I found some in this book. We find it in others going through the same thing. Feeling seen, heard and understood.
Connecting through the guilt that is put upon the children of immigrants to be grateful for all the parents went through to get them there. Not realizing that the children also had to go through a journey.

I just wanted to hug Katya when she realized she would never experience being loved and cared for in the way children are, after she had grown up without that experience.
I think it’s especially hard to release a book like this into a world filled with hateful people that enjoy commenting hateful things about undocumented immigrants.
I went to her Instagram and found piles of hateful comments. It’s truly horrific how people can hate an undocumented child that had no choice!

So Katya, if you’re reading this, you have an ally in me. Your story meant so much to me, as I am sure it will mean to many others. Hang in there, kid. Sending love from Norway ❤️

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for gifting me an arc.

[Brice Montgomery]

Thanks to NetGalley & Alcove Press for the ARC!

Katya Suvorova’s Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter: A Memoir From the Child of a Mail-Order Bride is a tactfully written post-mortem on a stolen childhood. It is also not a book I would recommend.

Before you consider reading this book, you need to understand that its marketing description is a lie. Suvorova’s voice is blunt and good-natured, but there’s nothing “darkly funny and irreverent” about the hundreds of pages of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that comprise the memoir. Likewise, this book has nothing in common with the lurid charm of 90 Day Fiancé, nor does it suggest that the author’s mother “sacrificed her life” so that her daughter’s could be better. If anything, Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter and its clueless marketing highlight how our culture is ill-equipped to engage with other people’s trauma.

It might seem unfair to harp so much on the conversation surrounding the memoir, but it feels vital to understanding the challenges of the book. There are two parallel stories throughout: Suvorova’s abusive childhood with her mother as an undocumented kid in the US, and her reconnection with her father as an adult in Russia. Narratively, it’s a smart approach as we see young Katya become increasingly fearful of her father while we watch her adult counterpart learn to trust him. Unfortunately, that hopeful element—the pinprick of light that pierces the darkness—is probably about 15%-20% of this otherwise oppressively bleak book. Many reviews praise the memoir, suggesting that Suvorova’s courage makes it excellent, but I’m not sure if suffering is a story.

To be clear, Suvorova is a great writer. Each interaction she describes with her mother is loathsome and anarchic, to the point that I always wanted to stop reading. Conversely, reading about her father’s love felt like a warm hug after hearing how the author was abused by every other man in her life. There's a real grace to how Suvorova tells these untellable things, and every sentence is carefully crafted. It takes tremendous bravery to write it all down, but to what end?

I’ve noted in many reviews that I believe memoirs should serve both the author and the audience, but I’m not sure Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter really does either. Every detail feels like it’s at Suvorova’s expense, and there isn’t enough context for readers to look at it with anything other than voyeurism. Aside from an occasional, half-hearted gesture at the complex reality of being undocumented—something that feels almost editorially mandated for political relevance—the memoir never feels ready to reckon with the past it revisits.

And that’s not Katya Suvorova’s fault.

My concern is that Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter inspires pity instead of empathy, and that will feel just as good to undiscerning readers. The content matter is too traumatic for most of us to process, but Suvorova also isn't able to do so in a way that sustains a memoir. As such, the book caters to an unhealthy kind of appetite and allows readers to co-opt the author's story for whatever purpose they see fit—just look at the condescension in the performatively effusive reviews. The implicit takeaway for many readers is that the author’s experience was ultimately redeemed by virtue of her obtaining citizenship, or that her experience is a case study in being undocumented. These are sensitive issues, but they can't make sense of senseless cruelty. If you make someone an object lesson, you've made them into an object.

Ultimately, Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter is an odd memoir in that it feels like the best way to respect the author is to avoid the book. At least, maybe wait until you can personally answer why it's right to stare at another person's trauma. Katya Suvorova is a brilliant writer with a bright future, but I'm not sure her past belongs to us.

[Liralen]

When Suvorova was three, her mother took her from their home in Russia to Mexico and then across the US border. I will never go back home again, she writes, but I don't know that yet (loc. 135*). What followed was a desperate chase for the elusive green card: men who promised stability; men who said they were looking for love; men who dangled the promise of a green card application as a carrot always just out of reach; men who threatened to turn Suvorova and her mother in to the authorities.

I didn't know it then, but there will be many, many men opening their arms in front of their apartments, town houses, homes, and saying the exact same thing. Have you ever seen anything this nice before? Only Joe will be able to say it in Russian, but we will understand. (loc. 177)

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter is Suvorova's story of growing up undocumented and on unstable ground, not only with the men who fell in and out of her mother's life but with her mother herself. And it is a gripping story. I read half of it in one day and then slowed down (a bit) so it would last a bit longer. The story is told in two timelines, with the majority taking place during Suvorova's upbringing and a later timeline discussing her finding her biological father in adulthood. But the strongest material, by far, is about Suvorova's relationship with her mother.

With time, I will realize how scared she was. I will realize that my mother knows desperation in a way I never will. (loc. 240)

My grandmother often tells me how she begged my mom to leave me with her, but my mother refused. I think regularly of what a life in Russia would have looked like for me, who I would have become had my mom left me. Would I be someone I like more? I also never got to know the version of my mom who grew up in her home country. [...] I wonder what direction our relationship would have grown if she hadn't taken me with her to this country. (loc. 560)

This is complicated, messy material about complex, real people. It's so clear how many layers Suvorova's understanding of her mother has: someone who was smart and resourceful and determined; someone who missed her own mother; someone who took the limited options available to her and ran as far as she could with them; someone who perhaps never understood and perhaps never tried to understand her daughter; someone who looked the other way when her daughter was abused; someone whose desperation changed her irrevocably. Suvorova sees this, and she loves her mother; she sees this, and she knows that a relationship under these terms cannot be healthy for her. There's both compassion and clear-sightedness here, a difficult and delicate line that Suvorova treads well.

I'll leave out the nitty-gritty of the story, but the subtitle alone should tell you that this is an interesting one, and often a difficult one. A high four stars; recommended to anyone who is interested in complicated families or who has been thinking about immigration lately.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

[Abby Farris]

Rating - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I love a memoir that grabs me from the very first chapter and leaves me desperate to know more about a person's life. Katya does exactly that in Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter.

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter: A Memoir from the Child of a Mail-Order Bride is a deeply personal memoir that explores identity, family, resilience, and the lasting impact of systems that fail to protect the most vulnerable.

Content warnings: childhood sexual abuse, childhood neglect, human trafficking, intimate partner violence, discrimination, food insecurity, and housing instability. Please take care of yourself if any of these topics may be difficult for you.

Because Katya approaches these lived experiences with such honesty and vulnerability, this memoir is both heartbreaking and incredibly rich. It left me with a renewed sense of urgency to advocate for people whose identities and circumstances often leave them with fewer protections and opportunities within our systems.

One of my favorite aspects was the structure. The memoir opens with a glimpse into a pivotal moment before taking us back to the beginning of Katya's story, gradually weaving those opening scenes back into focus. It immediately hooked me and kept me invested from beginning to end.

As someone who frequently listens to memoirs on audio, I always appreciate when an author narrates their own story, and Katya was no exception. Hearing her tell these experiences in her own voice added another layer of authenticity that made the book even more powerful.

One thought I couldn't shake while reading was that Katya and I are around the same age. That made her experiences feel especially immediate and real. It was impossible not to wonder how differently two lives can unfold simply because of the circumstances we're born into.

This book felt like sitting across from someone who trusts you enough to tell you the hardest parts of their life and leaving the conversation determined to help create a better world. Perfect for readers who appreciate honest memoirs, powerful social commentary, and stories that inspire both empathy and action. Thank you, Katya, for the courage it took to share your story. It's one I won't soon forget.

[Abigail Hoekstra]

Thank you NetGalley for access to an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a stunning memoir. The weaving of memories from near and far past, the emotional intelligence Katya shows throughout, the bits of humour to cut through the hardships, it was all so beautifully done. Thank you for sharing your story Katya and showing how obtaining citizenship is not as simple as it’s made out to be, and for shedding light on the different reasons people have for immigrating and the experiences someone going through the immigration system may have. I also appreciated that Katya acknowledges throughout the memoir that her story does not speak for all immigrants of all backgrounds and she emphasizes the nuances that made some parts of her immigration experience different or “easier” than people of another ethnicity. I also appreciated that the memoir wasn’t an exploitation of Katya’s trauma, she expressed her story in a way that felt honest, rather than oversensationalized for shock value. Wishing the author peace and endless love.

#IndigoEmployee

[Kristina Anderson]

Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for the ARC (Advance Reader Copy) of Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova. This was quite the memoir. The hardship of being the daughter of a mail-order-bride from Russia, and all the abusive relationships her mother went through in order to get a Green Card. Katya suffered a lot growing up with a mother who would do anything to stay in America and get her citizenship. I am so glad Katya included the not so distant past, to understand that she was able to have a relationship with her now husband. There is a lot to process with this memoir. Hugs to you Katya. I gave this one 5 stars. #KatyaSuvorova #NetGalley #AlcovePress

[R.]

Thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy!

I am still processing everything. I get to read a decent amount of memoirs, and I feel like this one is one of those that will stick with me. It is a debut book, which surprised me because the writing style feels so confident and personal.

The author had to deal with so many heavy, adult problems when she was just a little girl, and I find it really heartbreaking to read about how much she had to go through just to survive, especially with moving around so much and not having a lot of support or love around her. It is definitely a sad story in a lot of parts, and it shows a very raw side of the immigrant experience that people don't usually talk about.

[The Bookish Elf]

Every chapter of Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova is stamped with its coordinates before a word of it begins: season, year, the narrator's age, and her school grade. Fall, early 2000s, eight years old, third grade. It reads like housekeeping. It is the most consequential decision in the book, and once you notice what it is doing you cannot stop seeing it.

How Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter Is Built

Three hundred pages: an author's note, a prologue, seven parts, sixty-odd titled chapters.

The author's note is a content warning, a statement that the book is drawn from memory with details changed, and a list of the twenty-five pseudonyms in use. A reader knows, before the prologue, what is coming and how much has been masked.

Then two timelines, cut against each other for the whole length of Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova. One runs from a Moscow airport in the late nineties, where a three-year-old is being pried off her grandmother's legs, through Mexico, a border crossing, Idaho and Houston. The other is headed 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024, and begins with a woman in her late twenties clicking the add-friend button on her biological father's profile during lockdown.

The Child's Vocabulary

The childhood chapters of Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova are in present tense, in the words the child actually had.

This is the technical achievement and it is harder than it looks. A woman is strangled in a kitchen and the seven-year-old holding her toddler sister cannot name it; her first guess is that the man might be about to kiss her mother. A five-year-old pushes a doll's shoe up her nose, an ambulance is called over her mother's objections, and that is how she learns, in shaky Russian, that they are not supposed to be here.

Suvorova almost never cheats by reaching forward for the adult word. She allows herself a sentence or two per chapter to say what she understood later. The gap between what the narrator can describe and what the reader can is where the effect lives.

The Second Timeline

The adult strand is not atmosphere. It is the question the childhood strand is asking.

The deepest subject of Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova is not poverty or violence or immigration law, though it is about all three. It is being believed. By her account she disclosed what a stepfather had done when she was eleven and was told not to repeat it to the lawyers, because it would make her mother look negligent. At nineteen she reported him to the police to keep her sister out of his house, and the district attorney dropped it: the only evidence was her word, a decade on. Her mother's own lawyer told her this happens all the time.

So the 2020s chapters, in which a father she was taught to think of as a monster turns out to have spent twenty years learning English against the chance of a call, are not an epilogue. They are the answer, withheld for two hundred pages.

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter and the Word in Its Title

The title is not a slogan being reclaimed. It is the charge sheet.

Ungrateful is what two stepfathers call her, in her account, what her mother calls her, and what she spends Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova frightened of being. Gratitude is the instrument everyone reaches for: be grateful for the citizenship, the house, the man who paid for it, the country that let you in. The counter-case is built rather than asserted. A school friend's family, undocumented for longer and for the same reasons, mow lawns and clean houses while the narrator's mother holds a desk job; when that friend's father runs a stop sign he is taken to the border, and is still on the wrong side of it fourteen years later.

The book never says the quiet part and then rests on it. It lays the two families side by side and lets you finish the sentence. The law is sketched with the same restraint, including the provision under the Violence Against Women Act a woman in her mother's position could have used, and, the adult narrator discovers, did eventually try.

Where Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter Thins Out
The adult chapters sag in the middle. Several 2020 and 2021 sections are a conversation on a sofa in which the husband asks a well-aimed question and she answers it. Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova does not need commentary; the childhood strand supplies its own.
The mother is withheld exactly where the book needs her. We get the casino in post-Soviet Russia, the freezer, the massacre nobody reported. Then the reasoning stops. Why she refused the father's offer to pay for college, why she cut off her own mother: asked, never answered.
Sixty-odd chapters means some are two pages. A few land hard. Others repeat what the surrounding chapters established, and Parts 4 and 5 add nothing.
The compulsion deserved more. The narrator counts the letters of her own thoughts on her fingers for most of a decade, needing them to land on the little finger. One of the best things here, retired in half a sentence about a diagnosis in college.
Read It If, Skip It If

Read it if:

You want to see how much structural work a dateline can do.
A grandmother is the kind of character you read for. Valentina peels bark off an American tree to prove Russian trees are sturdier, runs a lemonade business out of a Home Depot bucket with no cups, and is the only unambiguously good adult here.
You like a morally unresolved teacher. A geography teacher decides this child is not stupid and hands her an advantage she has not earned, arguing that everyone else was born holding one. She felt like a fraud, wore the medals anyway, and became clever because she was treated as clever.

Skip it if:

You need a memoir to arrive at forgiveness. This one ends in estrangement, stated plainly, with no reconciliation scene.
The content notes below are a wall you cannot get over. They are not decorative.
Content Notes

The author's own note to Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova names rape, kidnapping and the physical and sexual abuse of a child, and that is the floor. The sexual abuse of a child by a stepfather runs across several chapters, told in the child's vocabulary and without graphic detail, and the disclosure is suppressed by an adult. A rape occurs off the page, overheard by a child shut in a closet. Domestic violence throughout: strangulation, hair-dragging, objects thrown at a face, a woman locked in her own house. An adult strikes a teenager and denies it. Neglect: a four-year-old alone overnight, a seven-year-old made responsible for a toddler, untreated lice, hunger. Self-harm, including a scene in which a girl asks a friend to cut her. Suicidal ideation and one overdose. Two coerced terminations, described obliquely. Parental alcoholism and drunk driving with a child aboard; cocaine use; an unnamed eating disorder. Immigration detention and deportation. Racist speech from family members, and anti-immigrant abuse at school. A pet's death on the page.

Worth Your Shelf

The last chapter is set in an airport, which is where the first one was set, and the symmetry is earned rather than arranged. Between them sit three hundred pages in which almost every adult who could have helped did not. The two who did were a grandmother on a three-month visa and a teacher who bent a rule.

This is a debut, and it shows wherever the argument gets spoken aloud instead of built. It also does the thing this kind of memoir most often fails at: it refuses to let a reader round the narrator's age up. She was three and a half at the airport, seven on the worst day, ten when a household became her job. The chapter headers will not let you forget it, and that is why the book works.

[Elisabeth]

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter: A Memoir From the Child of a Mail-Order Bride by Katya Suvorova was a harrowing read that I couldn’t put down. I finished it in one sitting.

This is not an easy memoir. The story is intense and, at times, difficult to process, especially in its portrayal of an unlikeable and complicated mother. At the same time, there are moments where she is more sympathetic, particularly considering how young she was, still in her twenties while raising a child.

While my own experience is very different, parts of the cultural background resonated with me as someone who is half Russian. It even made me miss my own babushka, which added a more personal layer to the reading experience.

Katya’s story is not unique in the United States, and she does a great job of highlighting that. She speaks to her own experience as a white undocumented immigrant while also sharing stories that reflect the realities of Hispanic undocumented immigrants.

This is a powerful and unsettling memoir that stays with you. Not an easy read, but one that is hard to look away from.

Thank you to Alcove Press for the ARC.

[Qian Julie]

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter is a searing, eye-opening, and intimately honest account of what it means to come of age as an undocumented immigrant who has her childhood end too soon. I cried, I laughed, I could not put this book down. I will be thinking of Katya Suvorova’s words for years to come.

[Amanda Negro]

Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review this title.

Katya Suvorova’s memoir is an honest and vulnerable telling of the author’s life as a child of a mail order bride coming to the States from Russia. Through her mother’s abusive marriages and her own trauma, the author also reveals her strength and beauty. This is seen in her relationship with her beloved grandmother and her protection of her baby sister. Too much was taken from her in childhood and still the author preserves her love for her mother, recognizing her humanity and working to find her own.

[Gemma]

Whoever wrote the blurb for this book did not read it. It is a (beautifully written) book about a deeply traumatic childhood filled with abuse and neglect. There is no dark humor or wit, how they likened it to 90 day fiancé is beyond me.

I hope the marketing does not get this book negative reviews

[DeeAnn TheTBRBucketlist]

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks so much to Alcove Press for the eBook. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This memoir follows Katya as she is brought to the U.S. from Russia by her mother in the 90s. It documents the struggles they faced being undocumented immigrants and the challenges Katya overcame being raised by emotionally unstable and abusive adults.

I felt like her story is worth telling and will make you want to look out better for those around you who may be struggling. Katya was failed by so many adults around her. I appreciate that she was able to tell her story, even though it was truly heartbreaking. It immediately made me want to wake up my kids and just hold them.

I think this book would be interesting to those who enjoyed reading Educated or have complicated relationships with parents or parental figures while growing up.

[Elena]

Buckle up folks - this is a tough read. I am so grateful to have received an ARC of this memoir and grateful to Katya for sharing her story.

While our immigration stories are very different, I found so many of the cultural details in this book relatable. The writing is so authentic for Katya as both an adult and child, that reading this feels incredibly intimate, like peeking into someone’s diary. This is a quick read that took me 3 weeks to read just because I kept on having to take breaks to process it. Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter is a heavy book with serious triggers and isn’t something you can just breeze through.

While I find it difficult to rate a memoir at all - I mean you can’t put a rating on someone’s personal experiences - this one is an easy 5 star read just due to the incredible writing and authenticity. This may have wounded me deeper than it would other readers due to its relatability - the struggle of growing up in a culture different than your own and figuring out your own identity hit close to home.

Couldn’t recommend this more, thank you to NetGalley for the ARC and to Katya for writing & sharing her story.

[Michelle]

Thank you to Net Galley for this ARC. I absolutely loved this story. Katya is such a great writer and I look forward to reading anything else she writes.

[Anna]

When I picked this book up, I hadn't read in several months due to stress from life changes, but I was eager to get my hands on Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter after reading removed excerpts and anecdotes shared by Katya. Once I began reading her memoir, I could hardly put it down, and I finished the book within 48 hours. That is the power of an incredible author. And as someone who has read dozens of memoirs in the past few years, I can honestly say that this is one of the best I know - quite possibly, my new favorite.

Katya's writing style is immersive, honest, and thoughtful. Though it is written from the perspective of her as a child, she manages to quietly inject the self-aware knowledge of her adult self through beautiful juxtaposition, the spaces between, and the voice of the adults - and sometimes other children - who were in her life at the time. Though clear and honest about the role and shortcomings of those who should have protected her, she also manages to paint them with a loving, understanding, and forgiving tone that shows a level of thoughtful clarity and profound maturity. I found her book both enlightening regarding topics I was not familiar with, such as the specific conditions of Russia in the '90s, while also being relatable and healing for me when it came to some of her family dynamics and experiences she had as a child.

As a reader, this memoir did it all for me, and while I tore through every page eagerly, I was also sad when it ended, as I could read Katya's writing every day.

[Trina]

I was thrilled to receive an ARC of this memoir—its title immediately caught my attention, and once I began reading, I couldn’t put it down. Katya Suvorova’s voice is sharp, humorous, and deeply engaging, all while preserving the innocence and limited understanding of her younger self.

The memoir follows Katya’s immigration from Russia to the United States, where she is promised a safer, better life by her mother. What unfolds instead is a childhood marked by instability, hardship, and a profound lack of protection. Through these experiences, Suvorova reveals not only the challenges of being an immigrant, but also the quiet, often overlooked struggles of a child navigating trauma without guidance. Despite it all, Suvorova manages to build a life for herself, driven by the love and loyalty she holds for her sister and grandmother.

The writing is concise and direct, with small specks of humor woven throughout. I especially appreciated the shorter chapters, which made it an easy and compelling read. Overall, I highly recommend this book!

Finished April 7 2026. To be published September 29 2026.
Thank you Netgalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange of an honest review.

[Ashlee Izor]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC. All opinions in this review are my own.

Wow, just incredible! This story is heartbreaking, complex, and deeply intense, with just enough moments of lightness to let you breathe before pulling you back under. It follows the resilience of a child stripped from everything she’s ever known and forced to navigate a future filled with uncertainty, instability, and isolation.

I flew through this book, but I felt every single moment. There is so much bravery in this book. You absolutely know it must have been so hard to revisit and share some of these moments so openly. And that is what makes this so powerful.

This book is a reminder that stories like this are not rare but they’re just often unheard. And it makes it clear: there is still so much work to do.

[Kate Hergott]

Katya Suvorova has created an incredibly vulnerable memoir that boldly depicts her journey to understanding her mother and then herself.

I myself grew up with a difficult mother, although not the same, and the depiction of developing OCD in a home as mercurial as hers resonated with me so much. Her mother's inconsistency in how she loved Katya was also heartbreaking but familiar. I was in tears as Katya came to terms with the fact that her mother would never feel like a mother should, and I'm grateful to her for sharing her story with the world, because it's one of the hardest things to come to terms with.

However, it's not ALL harrowing, and I loved reading as she found her people. When family doesn't act like family, found family and true ride or dies are the best salve for healing and moving forward.

This is a haunting but empowering memoir that dives into the immigrant experience, family dysfunction and mental health struggles told with a underlying dark wit.

I also loved that Katya narrated, which made it feel even more personal.

[Sasha Vasilyuk]

I laughed and then cried and then laughed again. This book is a rollicking and fearless memoir by someone who must have been really scared - scared of a new, bewildering country, scared of abusive stepfathers, scared of losing her family, scared of immigration officers, and, finally, scared of how far her mother would go to erase her own past and secure a legal future for them in the US. This is a very unique immigration story that will have you biting your nails from the scene when the 4-year-old Katya is brought to the US from Mexico in the back of a truck until the very end.

[Natalie K]

I didn't care for this one. Too disjointed, and the writing was very choppy. The parts were in the beginning, as I learned some nuances of Russian (I'm a Russian speaker, but it's my second language, so I'm always trying to learn as much as possible). In the chapter "Jerry," when she sticks a Barbie shoe up her nose and tells her mother: Мой нос! Что-нибудь там. Я положила что-нибудь на мой нос! [My nose! There's something in it. I put something in my nose.] Then the mother replies: Втащить это! [Take it out!]

Also, MAJOR WARNING for violence against an animal in here. I would have preferred that warning to the insipid note she had in the beginning saying that mentioning the Harry Potter series did not imply endorsement of the author. (No kidding? I mean, I talk about a ton of authors and, guess what, it's obvious I don't endorse every view they espouse!)

[Nicole]

HAPPY PUB DAY! 🎉

I loved this memoir!

Katya Suvorova tells her heartbreaking coming-of-age story as the daughter of a Russian immigrant. At three years old, her mother smuggled her across the Mexican border into the United States. In her quest to gain citizenship, her mother marries multiple men, all of whom treat Katya poorly. She endures domestic abuse, alcoholism, neglect, and the constant fear of deportation. At 17, she discovers that her mother was a mail-order bride. A shocking discovery for her.

If you like memoirs, definitely check this one out! She did the audio narration herself, and it was spot-on.

Thank you @blackstonepublishing @netgalley for my ALC.

#bestestbookclubever

[Izzy Bev]

The author writes in first person from the perspective of herself as a child, as a child sees the world, using words she would have available and yet creates a full and at times incredibly painful picture. It’s so technically impressive. A difficult memoir but worth it.

[Sahar]

I don’t rate memoirs but this was incredible. A difficult and sad read but well worth reading if you’re into memoirs and the immigrant experience.

[Ellie Moon]

Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for providing me with an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

“Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter” is an absolutely riveting memoir of the daughter of a mail order bride. I flew through the book in a single day.

Suvorova’s writing is clear-eyed and captivating, giving the reader a glimpse into the most excruciating moments of her life and the moments of hope along the way. The authors tenacity and bravery in light of such a terrible upbringing shine through the pages, as she reflects on not only the suffering she’s inherited, but also the privileges of her skin color and (eventual) citizenship.

I cannot recommend this book enough, especially for readers who enjoyed memoirs like “Educated” and “The Glass Castle.” An all at once stellar and heartbreaking read that will stay with me for a long time to come.

[Janet]

So, I’ve never watched 90 Day Fiancé. I’ve not read I’m Glad My Mom Died. Honestly, I didn’t find it hilarious. I also didn’t really get the idea that her mom ‘sacrificed everything for her.’ All taken from the synopsis. I didn’t really know what I was going to get to listen to, but it wasn’t the synopsis. In so many ways, it was actually better than that. I never quite got the mail-order bridge connection, but that doesn’t really impact the way I felt about Katya’s life. While I didn’t get hilarious, I did get something that was closer to my heart: a very dry, just-shy-of-sarcasm sense of humor.

That dry sense of humor is what resonated the most with me. She talks about a lot of really rough things that happened throughout her life in America. Some dark things that probably deserve a trigger warning here. She was molested; she had a friend who did self-injury that she tried herself, and even a brief attempt to take her own life. Add to that a mother who was the opposite of supportive of her daughter. The shining light that was, at best, intermittent was Babushka. I say intermittent only because she was still living in Russia, and for several years Mom kept them out of communication on purpose. She unpacks a lot as a child illegally in America. There’s a lot of dark, that comes out as dry humor at times, from the lens of a child. And I think that’s really what makes this life all the more compelling.

How do you judge the story of someone’s life by attaching a rating? How do you judge the story of someone’s life when you are listening/reading through your own lens? And at the end of the day, that’s what a book review/reaction is all about. That star rating also determines the marketability and rankings for the author and publisher. And I really have a hard time attaching those judgments sometimes. Someone else’s life is not mine, and sometimes they experience things I can’t imagine, and sometimes they have experiences that I can resonate with in a different way. What I can say is that this was very well written, with some hiccups. I felt like some things were repeated, but then that resonates to the author and growing up. You see the same experiences on repeat in life, and your reaction to them changes with maturity. Katya Suvorova did an amazing job of telling her story, inclusively, not just the easy parts or just the things you are comfortable telling. And that takes a lot of courage to step out and tell it inclusively. A little sass, a lot of dark dry humor, and a whole lot of maturity. Can you say I liked this book when the story is somewhat depraved, with a whole lot of healing? That feels wrong. I can say that I loved that the author felt safe to tell her story in such a way that you felt immersed into it.

Originally published at https://fizzypopcollection.com/book-r...

[Yana Hendrikse]

An Important Perspective, Rarely Told
This memoir was phenomenal. I rarely read, yet I ripped through this book in a matter of days. I couldn't put it down. I felt compelled to preorder it after coming across the author on Instagram, and when it arrived on Friday afternoon, I was finished by Monday night. The emotional release this book brought on was something else.
Growing up in North America as a Russian-speaking immigrant of a similar age to Katya, her vivid account of a difficult childhood captured a perspective that is rarely told or considered in the broader cultural consciousness. Her words brought back formative feelings I remember well: struggling with cultural identity and the toll it takes on one's self-worth, confidence, and ability to thrive. You can feel her mind racing as she tries to make sense of all the contradictions in her life: grateful for but angry at this new culture; tolerated yet othered by peers and adults alike; and drawn in by the promise of America while simultaneously being rejected by it.
As a mother, hearing her story from both the perspective of the child enduring narcissistic abuse and the young adult grappling with recovery and CPTSD was gut-wrenching and important. The book forces readers to reckon with the decisions parents make and the lasting impact those decisions can have on a child's mental and emotional well-being.
This book took a lifetime of misfortune and abuse to write, a cost no child should ever have to pay.
Thank you for sharing your story, Katya. Growing up, I knew of a handful of mail-order brides in the community. I heard the subtle judgments of by Russian speaking parents and North American peers, and I felt a similar drive to distance myself from being associated with "them" as a young woman with a shared cultural identity... a Russian sounding name and white but different face. I was the same age as their children, yet I never had access to, or even considered, the horrifying reality of growing up having been "sold" alongside your mother. What that meant for your childhood. For your humanity. For your access to a family that could love you in the way a child needs to be loved. For your relationship with your siblings. And for your relationship with the mother you had, which no one gets to choose.
What does it mean when your mother is the type of woman who makes these choices? What does that mean for the love, care, and safety you receive throughout your life? These are difficult questions to confront, but your story demands that we do.
Thank you for telling your story. Because children matter. You matter. And you always did.

[Gillian]

Beautiful, painful, raw, haunting, and addictive. This book is everything and more than I hoped it would be. Katya’s story of illegal immigration at the age of 4 is told with such earnestness and linguistic prowess that it brought me to tears multiple times. I cannot recommend it more highly to anyone curious about the value of citizenship, belonging, and the importance of stability. In a time rife with anti-immigrant narratives, this book is the slap in the face Americans need.

There is so much more I could say, but I don’t want to spoil the plot. This book is best read going in blind so you can experience Katya’s journey with the same innocence she did.*

I love, love, loved this book. It has instantly earned its place as a top shelf read.

*Note: please observe the content warnings at the beginning of the book. This is a very heavy read and while Katya was a child experiencing these things, the subject material is not suitable for children.

[Caitlin Lee]

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter was a really heartbreaking and powerful memoir to read. Katya deftly tells the story of her experience as an immigrant from childhood to adulthood and all the struggles she endured. The way the past and more recent timelines were woven together was really well done and provided strong pacing (and impact) for her story. I appreciated her unflinching vulnerability about the abuse and neglect she faced throughout her life - including from her own mother who was both a victim and victimizer. It was difficult to see all the ways in which her mother's patterns, behaviors, and lies led continued abusive and dangerous situations. Even after all Katya endured, she did escape that cycle of trauma and has rebuilt what was taken from her as a child. I am grateful she has found so much joy and love in her adulthood.

[Jessica]

Pre-ordered this book and absolutely devoured it.

Some of the topics in this book were difficult or sad, but they were comforting in their relatability. There's so much I want to say/write but I'm not as good of a writer, and it's hard to fit into a recommendation blurb.

The only thing I wish could have been gone into with greater detail was the decision to go no-contact, as that was something I was really hoping to hear about from a similar perspective, and how it might be affecting her adult life, and how she feels about it now.

Highly recommend to anyone also feeling like an ungrateful immigrant daughter, or an ungrateful daughter of Slavic immigrants.