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Farewell, Mama Odessa
Set in the summer of 1979 at the height of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, Farewell, Mama Odessa is an autobiographical novel whose intertwined storylines follow a variety of people—dissidents, victims of ethnic discrimination, and black marketeers among them—as they bid farewell to their beloved hometown of Odessa, Ukraine, and make their way to the West. At the book’s center is Boris, a young writer thwarted by state censorship and antisemitism. With an Angora kitten for his companion and together with other émigrés, he puts the old country in his rear-view mirror and sets out on a journey that will take him to Bratislava, Vienna, Rome, and New York on his way to Los Angeles. Will Boris be able to rekindle his creative passion and inspiration in the West? Will other Jewish émigrés fit into the new society, so much different than the one they left behind? With humor and compassion, Farewell, Mama
Odessa describes the émigrés’ attempts at adjustment to the free world.
Odessa describes the émigrés’ attempts at adjustment to the free world.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2020
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About the author
Emil Draitser
20 books10 followersAn author and professor of Russian at Hunter College in NYC, a three-time recipient of fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, in addition to his twelve books, his work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Partisan Review, and the North American Review. "
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 24, 2019
Farewell, Mama Odessa is a musing on migration, displacement and the strange world of Soviet bureaucracy.
The blurb speaks of telling the stories of adjustment to a new life in the free world. The focus, though, is very much more on the circumstances that led to two Jewish men independently to seek to emigrate to the West: Boris, a young journalist who is unable to report as he would wish on the failings of the state; and Yurik, an average guy who has been caught with stolen leather to support his private sideline of making shoes. Fully half the book is taken with the back stories and an exploration of bureaucracy; the anti-semitic discrimination; and everyday life in Odessa. The narrative pretty much ends then with the journey out. The remaining pages comprise letters from Uncle Ilya, an emigre who tells Boris of his first experiences in the west; and more Kafkaesque vignettes of life back in the USSR of the various fellow emigres that Boris and Yurik meet.
The book is pitched as a novel, but there are elements of it that feel like short stories, comic sketches, and political essay.
This might sound heavy going, but the tone is light wry humour. And the political tone is more neutral than one might expect. The Soviet Union is portrayed as bureaucratic and inefficient; there is a sense that people are not in full control of their destiny and that their lives could be upturned on a whim, but that most people were comradely and decent. Bureaucrats could be bribed and rules could be played. Meanwhile, life in the west was neither as bountiful nor as venal as the emigres had expected.
While the narrative follows Boris and Yurik, the most interesting elements are Uncle Ilya’s letters. These offer a depth of reflection that one suspects is Emil Draitser’s own perspective (he says in his foreword that both Boris and Ilya represent his own experience at different stages of his emigration journey). This is a perspective of part bemusement and part rapid learning. There are some teachable moments, but mostly an understanding that east and west are not poles apart; that the human instinct for self-preservation is universal and that emigres can get homesick, even when they have supposedly fled from oppression and ended up in the free world.
Farewell, Mama Odessa is an odd book, but one that is both enlightening and rewarding.
The blurb speaks of telling the stories of adjustment to a new life in the free world. The focus, though, is very much more on the circumstances that led to two Jewish men independently to seek to emigrate to the West: Boris, a young journalist who is unable to report as he would wish on the failings of the state; and Yurik, an average guy who has been caught with stolen leather to support his private sideline of making shoes. Fully half the book is taken with the back stories and an exploration of bureaucracy; the anti-semitic discrimination; and everyday life in Odessa. The narrative pretty much ends then with the journey out. The remaining pages comprise letters from Uncle Ilya, an emigre who tells Boris of his first experiences in the west; and more Kafkaesque vignettes of life back in the USSR of the various fellow emigres that Boris and Yurik meet.
The book is pitched as a novel, but there are elements of it that feel like short stories, comic sketches, and political essay.
This might sound heavy going, but the tone is light wry humour. And the political tone is more neutral than one might expect. The Soviet Union is portrayed as bureaucratic and inefficient; there is a sense that people are not in full control of their destiny and that their lives could be upturned on a whim, but that most people were comradely and decent. Bureaucrats could be bribed and rules could be played. Meanwhile, life in the west was neither as bountiful nor as venal as the emigres had expected.
While the narrative follows Boris and Yurik, the most interesting elements are Uncle Ilya’s letters. These offer a depth of reflection that one suspects is Emil Draitser’s own perspective (he says in his foreword that both Boris and Ilya represent his own experience at different stages of his emigration journey). This is a perspective of part bemusement and part rapid learning. There are some teachable moments, but mostly an understanding that east and west are not poles apart; that the human instinct for self-preservation is universal and that emigres can get homesick, even when they have supposedly fled from oppression and ended up in the free world.
Farewell, Mama Odessa is an odd book, but one that is both enlightening and rewarding.
March 17, 2020
Two narrative threads about two very different men are intertwined in this moving novel about migration and the émigré experience. Aspiring journalist and writer Boris Schuster has to confront Soviet censorship and restrictions on what he can write. Yurik Bumstein is just an ordinary Soviet citizen who finds himself on the wrong side of the law when he is discovered with an illegal supply of leather from which he hopes to make shoes to earn extra money and this at a time when private enterprise is forbidden. Both realise that their only hope for a better life is to leave the Soviet Union for the west. We follow them as they battle first Soviet bureaucracy and anti-Semitism in the Brezhnev era, then their struggle as Jews to be allowed to leave and then the requirement to adapt to life in an alien culture. I found this documentary and semi-autobiographical novel a compelling read, immersive, atmospheric and a fascinating insight into what emigration from your native land is really like, how hopes and aspirations are one thing but dealing with the practicalities of daily life quite another. There are many humorous interludes about the endless adjustments that have to be made, and how preconceptions and assumptions lead to bewilderment and confusion, but there’s never mockery, and the sarcasm is spot-on – and recognisable to anyone who has experience of Soviet and indeed Russian bureaucracy. My one criticism is the letters Boris receives from his uncle who has already emigrated to the US – these have a very literary and formal feel to them, and are very much an obvious device to express the author’s own thoughts and experiences. I felt that they sat awkwardly within the framework of the novel. However, this is a minor criticism and overall this was a book I thoroughly enjoyed and heartily recommend.
March 11, 2021
Enjoyed it greatly for humor, zany characters, feel of real life albeit a little bizarre.
I have gone on the same journey from the Soviet Union to America, at exactly the same time as characters in this book, Summer 1979.
So for me it was bittersweet to recognize some places, people and events of that time.
I suspect that it may not feel as poignant to "outsiders" but well worth attention if only for history and humor.
Btw, I have since found it in Russian " На Кудыкину гору".
I am not sure which came first: the chicken or the egg.
I suspect it was originally written in Russian and re-written/translated by the author.
I have gone on the same journey from the Soviet Union to America, at exactly the same time as characters in this book, Summer 1979.
So for me it was bittersweet to recognize some places, people and events of that time.
I suspect that it may not feel as poignant to "outsiders" but well worth attention if only for history and humor.
Btw, I have since found it in Russian " На Кудыкину гору".
I am not sure which came first: the chicken or the egg.
I suspect it was originally written in Russian and re-written/translated by the author.
January 10, 2020
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC!
In his autobiographical novel, Emil Draitser takes readers to Odessa, an “anomaly” of a “buoyant city” in the Soviet Union where they will follow Jewish emigrants as they flee the Soviet Union for the West. The book follows two primary characters: Boris, a journalist who feels that his crime of perverting the truth under Soviet direction is worse than the crime of guarding prisoners, and Yurik who struggles against the concept taught in schoolbooks that “a human being is meant to be happy, as birds are meant to fly” and who steals leather from the state to make boots in a search for happiness.
Draitser illuminates the fears attendant on the act of immigration at a moment when our country needs to be most aware of them. He writes, “It became a matter of life and death. And in fact, such were the stakes: those they let go had their Soviet citizenship stripped from them. There was no turning back. The very thought of it made him ill. It would be like skydiving into the unknown, crossing his fingers and praying his parachute opened in time, or at all. He knew the time for action was now. Even a few years ago, who would have thought it would be possible for anyone, let alone Jews, to apply for emigration?” Feeling they must travel now or lose the chance forever, emigrants are still swamped by fears of how they will fit in and make a new life.
As they struggle – first to leave, then to adapt, they run up against covert and explicit anti-Semitism. One character laments that he “wouldn’t mind having such a poetic name if it didn’t point to him belonging to a people whose ancient lineage wasn’t at all an attractive quality in the eyes of the local population.” Even as he shows readers conditions in the Soviet Union, Draitser shows American readers to themselves, highlighting our love of the First Amendment, our commitment to fight for others (which I hope is still intact as I type this), the stain of racial hatred, our isolationist leanings during World War II, football, Thanksgiving… All these things that we take for granted are exotic to the emigres and become interesting when shown to us through new eyes. A necessary read in a time when so many need a refuge and so many old, ugly ideologies have resurfaced.
In his autobiographical novel, Emil Draitser takes readers to Odessa, an “anomaly” of a “buoyant city” in the Soviet Union where they will follow Jewish emigrants as they flee the Soviet Union for the West. The book follows two primary characters: Boris, a journalist who feels that his crime of perverting the truth under Soviet direction is worse than the crime of guarding prisoners, and Yurik who struggles against the concept taught in schoolbooks that “a human being is meant to be happy, as birds are meant to fly” and who steals leather from the state to make boots in a search for happiness.
Draitser illuminates the fears attendant on the act of immigration at a moment when our country needs to be most aware of them. He writes, “It became a matter of life and death. And in fact, such were the stakes: those they let go had their Soviet citizenship stripped from them. There was no turning back. The very thought of it made him ill. It would be like skydiving into the unknown, crossing his fingers and praying his parachute opened in time, or at all. He knew the time for action was now. Even a few years ago, who would have thought it would be possible for anyone, let alone Jews, to apply for emigration?” Feeling they must travel now or lose the chance forever, emigrants are still swamped by fears of how they will fit in and make a new life.
As they struggle – first to leave, then to adapt, they run up against covert and explicit anti-Semitism. One character laments that he “wouldn’t mind having such a poetic name if it didn’t point to him belonging to a people whose ancient lineage wasn’t at all an attractive quality in the eyes of the local population.” Even as he shows readers conditions in the Soviet Union, Draitser shows American readers to themselves, highlighting our love of the First Amendment, our commitment to fight for others (which I hope is still intact as I type this), the stain of racial hatred, our isolationist leanings during World War II, football, Thanksgiving… All these things that we take for granted are exotic to the emigres and become interesting when shown to us through new eyes. A necessary read in a time when so many need a refuge and so many old, ugly ideologies have resurfaced.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews