Laughing All the Way to Freedom: The Americanization of a Russian Emigre
You must register by 5pm on October 21, 2024 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a book talk by Emil Draitser. Moderated by Mark Lipovetsky.
All immigrants of the world coming to America expect it to be like their home country—only better. What they rarely consider is that, like that of any other nation, America’s DNA differs from that of their country. It may take a lifetime to adjust to the unfamiliar country’s culture, mentality, and way of doing many things differently from the way they have known. It is especially true when immigrants come to America from a country based on different principles, in this case, collectivist Russia versus individualist America, with opposing political systems—the democratic American one and the totalitarian Soviet. A sequel to the author’s autobiographical trilogy—Shush! Growing up Jewish under Stalin, In the Jaws of the Crocodile, and Farewell, Mama Odessa—this book is part memoir and part cultural study about the challenges of immigration and American acculturation. With self-deprecating humor, the author, a former Soviet satirist who was punished for trespassing the boundaries of public criticism, recollects his growing pains as he overcame his indoctrinated upbringing in a totalitarian society to embrace America’s defining values.
Born in Odesa, Ukraine, to a working-class Jewish family. Under his pen name “Emil Abramov”, he began his writing career as a freelancer, contributing satirical articles to leading Soviet periodicals, such as Literary Gazette, Izvestia, Youth, and Crocodile, as well as on the Central Radio, TV, and in the satirical newsreel “The Wick” (Mosfilm).In 1970, he received a Special Prize for his satirical stories at the All-Union Literary Contest. Eventually, blacklisted for writing an article critical of an important official, he immigrated to the United States. In 1975, he settled in Los Angeles, where he earned a Ph.D. in Russian literature from UCLA. Professor Emeritus at Hunter College of the City University of New York, Emil Draitser is an award-winning author of artistic and scholarly prose. Besides his seventeen books in English, Russian, and Polish, he has published essays and short stories in the Los Angeles Times, Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Prism International, World Literature Today, and others. Laureate of the Mark Aldanov International Literary Prize and three-time recipient of prestigious fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, he has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Arts Studios, Woodstock Art Colony, and Banff Center for the Arts in Canada.
