Book Description
This new Readers Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner.”
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since.
Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas’s wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple melting pot.
In a series of deftly drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American English (hot dogs and hush puppies?—a complete mystery), American traditions (Thanksgiving turkey?—an even greater mystery, since it tastes like nothing), and American culture (Firoozeh’s parents laugh uproariously at Bob Hope on television, although they don’t get the jokes even when she translates them into Farsi).
Above all, this is an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing—without an accent.
Customer Reviews:
I LOVED THIS BOOK!!.......2007-09-15
I PICKED THIS BOOK UP AT THE LIBRARY, JUST RANDOMLY A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, AND LET ME SAY, THIS WAS THE FIRST BOOK TO EVER MAKE ME LAUGH OUTLOUD! THE ONLY PROBLEM I HAD WITH IT WAS IT WAS TOO SHORT!...IT TOOK ME 1 WEEK TO READ IT ONLY BECAUSE I TOOK MY TIME SAVORING IT..OTHER WISE I COULDHAVE FINISHED IT IN A COUPLE OF DAYS..I WAS SO ENDEARED WITH IT, I HAD TO PRCHASE MY OWN COPY..IM JUST WAITING FOR HER NEXT BOOK.
Funny in Farsi.......2007-08-24
It was a cute book, and I would rate it between 3 and 4. Some of it was cute and funny but overall, I was a little disappointed.
A perfect read.......2007-08-23
The book was great, I actually laughed out loud a couple of times. The book runs stacatto, so you don't have the time to get bored with long, drawn out chapters. I think anyone can relate to this book.
A must read.
FUNNY IN FARSI.......2007-08-01
Delightfully funny, FUNNY IN FARSI is an excellent journey into what it is like to assimilate into another culture. It is not often we get this type of story told with delicious humor, the range of experiences, or the perspective from having lived in each of her home countries twice. As an insight into what American culture is like to the foreigner, Firoozeh Dumas deserves much praise.
My recommendation is strong enough that I will be using this book as required reading for my eighth-grade International Baccalaureate students this year when we look at the subject of Cultural Influence. I expect that they, too, will find her story fresh, hilarious, and eye-opening. To walk in someone else's shoes is necessary for understanding; this book accomplishes a lot towards that goal. Also, the serious discussion of what it's like to be a Muslim in America should hopefully open a few minds.
That said, I do have a BIG problem with how this book is structured. More of a collection of essays than the story of her learning how to be an "American," the author (and editor) have given us a scattered approach to the story of assimilation that seems to pooh-pooh any dedication to chronology. In one chapter she is ten-years-old and in the next she discusses her French husband. Huh?! The erratic organization of this book is frustrating for the reader, because Dumas's editor could have solved this problem easily, but failed to do so.
If possible, I would have given this book four and a half stars instead of five.
Nevertheless, this book will make you laugh out loud...more than once! It's a delightful collection of essays (about the size you'd find in a magazine) about a family of Iranian immigrants who experience life in a new country told perceptively by a writer who really should become a regular magazine humorist/essayist. This is a book you can really enjoy one chapter at a time.
Funny in any language!.......2007-07-26
What a great read! This book was required reading for a Sociology course on Minorities in the United States. This book was a delightful surprise from the usually dull assigned books.
Ms. Dumas is cleaver and witty as she tells the tale of her family's immigration from Iran to the US in the early seventies. I definately recommend this book to all.
Book Description
A vivid, funny, and viscerally powerful memoir about childhood, assimilation, food, and growing up in the 1980s
As a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Bich Nguyen is filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity. In the pre-PC era Midwest, where the devoutly Christian blond-haired, blue-eyed Jennifers and Tiffanys reign supreme, Nguyen's barely conscious desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialties—spring rolls, delicate pancakes stuffed with meats, fried shrimp cakes—the campy, preservative-filled “delicacies” of mainstream America capture her imagination. And in this remarkable book, the glossy branded allure of such American foods as Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies become an ingenious metaphor for her struggle to fit in, to become a “real” American.
Beginning with Nguyen's family's harrowing migration from Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddha's Dinner is nostalgic and candid, deeply satisfying and minutely observed, and stands as a unique vision of the immigrant experience and a lyrical ode to how identity is often shaped by the things we long for.
Customer Reviews:
candid memoir of 70-80's American food in the midwest.......2007-09-11
"Stealing Buddha's Dinner" is as much Ms. Nguyen's story as it is mine. Ms. Nguyen reflects back on her childhood memories of TV commericials of Kool Aid, Carnation Instant Breakfast, and Hamburger Helper; her Dutch neighborhood of pork chops and shepard's pie; her grandmother's canh chua and bo xao voi hanh; and as if that wasn't enough, her stepmother Rosa's sopas. Throughout it all, Ms. Nguyen tries to find her identity in all these clashing cultures, desperately wanting to fit in, only to find solace in solitude, TV, and books. But perhaps the greatest mystery is what happened to her real mother.
It's truly a touching story of what it means to be an American with Asian eyes and black hair.
Is it more a problem of poverty or lack of substance?.......2007-08-29
This book is non-commital yet oddly angry and unsympathetic toward the narrator's kin: an ill-fitting immigrant step-mother, her ill-suited marraige and their whole patchwork family hold much potential for warmth and growth...but achieve none. Through the book I hoped for some grace, beauty or forgiveness - that the young narrator might find a connection to her family, her community or her nation(s).
At times there are glimpes of a connection, but in the end all of her self-pitiful assessments remain: her sisters were mean, father was distant, step-mother was an overly ambitious, class-confused control freak.
I'd hoped to learn that these fabulous, interesting people- her father, sisters, step-mother, and so-called friends (nothing more to her than ineffective stepping-stones to social success) actually had valid motives and had made valiant efforts, but in the end it was simple: they had not understood her and she had not understood them.
Most importantly, I learned that through her young life she'd been miserable. She'd wanted a lot of foods and other things she couldn't have, which was startlingly familiar to me because I was a kid at this time and I was poor too! I wanted all of those fabulous things like potato chips and soda-pop and barbie dolls, and I didn't get any of it either.
So perhaps this book is most eloquent as a story about growing up poor in America. Perhaps the difference between being a second generation immigrant and a fourth generation immigrant isn't so great as the difference between being poor and not being poor.
Or perhaps I read too much into this book, which may in fact just be about an angry girl who didn't know or get what she wanted.
If you're looking for an introduction into this time period and into an overlooked American population, or if you want an overview/example of the history and experience of Vietnamese/American refugee/immigrants, this is a good start...very simple and skimming the surface.
But for some really excellent and available Vietnamese literature, try "Novel without a Name" or "Paradise of the Blind" and for the Vietnamese-American experience, consider Le Ly Hayslip's "When Heaven & Earth Changed Places", for starters...for those who want to start with a little depth.
Awesome Book.......2007-08-23
This is an excellent book about growing up as a first generation american. I really identified witht the authors story. I also really enjoyed her style and all the awesome discriptions of food. Every time I finished a chapter, I wanted to get some pringles or a hostess cupcake. However, the thing I liked the most was that after reading this book, I realized that I was not alone. As a child I always felt different, but now that I am college I have learned to embrace who I am because being different is ok. Buy this book! Its great!
Great book!.......2007-07-05
I thought this book was excellent! Bich's memories of food, books and life in the 80s brought a ton of my own memories back to me. I may go back and read the Little House series again! :-) Very well written and compelling. I immediately passed it on to my mom who enjoyed it as well.
a fun, educational and interesting read.......2007-06-09
Growing up in Wisconsin I remember very well when many Vietnamese came to live in and around our city. Bich Ninh Nguyen brings her experience to life from the immigrants perspective and I felt as if I was there with her all along the way. This is an excellently writen book.
Average customer rating:
- Calculations are only as good as your numbers
- Pants on fire?
- Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
- Very Interesting
- History as Science Fiction
|
History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
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Similar Items:
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History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
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History: Fiction or Science? Astronomical methods as applied to chronology. Ptolemy's Almagest. Chronology III
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ASIN: 2913621058 |
Book Description
Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.
I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.
Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.
Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.
I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.
This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.
Book Description
Meet Annie Choi. She fears cable cars and refuses to eat anything that casts a shadow. Her brother thinks chicken is a vegetable. Her father occasionally starts fires at work. Her mother collects Jesus trading cards and wears plaid like it's a job. No matter how hard Annie and her family try to understand one another, they often come up hilariously short.
But in the midst of a family crisis, Annie comes to realize that the only way to survive one another is to stick together . . . as difficult as that might be. Annie Choi's Happy Birthday or Whatever is a sidesplitting, eye-opening, and transcendent tale of coping with an infuriating, demanding, but ultimately loving Korean family.
Customer Reviews:
pretty awesome esp. if you grew up with a crazy asian mom.......2007-10-02
hilarious and heartfelt, Annie Choi's book made me laugh out loud, and explained to the rest of the world what it's like to grow up Asian American or specifically, with nutty but loving parents who can barely communicate with you. Except in "Engrish" that is. However, the funniest thing she has written in my opinion was her "Open Letter To Architects" which is not in this collection. Good stuff though.
A bucket of laughs and gems :).......2007-07-31
What a great read! Almost every other page of Annie Choi's "Happy Birthday of Whatever" got me laughing to tears. Annie Choi does a wonderful job of putting humor and a little exaggerated drama in describing her relationship w/ her parents, especially that with her mother. Pick it up - you won't be disappointed!
Annie is so Good.......2007-06-20
The book is funny. The writer is so clean in her prose, so elegant in her descriptions, and so honest in her feelings. The book is moving. It is the story of a daughter with a blueprint to her mother's heart and roads that will lead beyond it. I highly recommend this book: because it is pertinently funny and universally accurate as a work on how we learn from the women who believe: will always be.
I wish I had written this!.......2007-05-29
Touching, sweet, and best of all, funny! As a first generation Korean- American, I thought many of the scenes could have been lifted from my own childhood. I look forward to Ms. Choi's future work.
Funny!.......2007-05-15
Very funny book -- crazy/real situations and Choi has a good turn of phrase. More than a few parts had me laughing out loud like a crazy woman. Definitely looking forward to what she writes next.
Amazon.com
The condition of exile is an exaggeration of the process of change and loss that many people experience as they grow and mature, leaving behind the innocence of childhood. Eva Hoffman spent her early years in Cracow, among family friends who, like her parents, had escaped the Holocaust and were skeptical of the newly imposed Communist state. Hoffman's parents managed to immigrate to Canada in the 1950s, where Eva was old enough to feel like a stranger--bland food, a quieter life, and schoolmates who hardly knew where Poland was. Still, there were neighbors who knew something of Old World ways, and a piano teacher who was classically Middle European in his neurotic enthusiasm for music. Her true exile came in college in Texas, where she found herself among people who were frightened by and hostile to her foreignness. Later, at Harvard, Hoffman found herself initially alienated by her burgeoning intellectualism; her parents found it difficult to comprehend. Her sense of perpetual otherness was extended by encounters with childhood friends who had escaped Cracow to grow up in Israel, rather than Canada or the United States, and were preoccupied with soldiers, not scholars. Lost in Translation is a moving memoir that takes the specific experience of the exile and humanizes it to such a degree that it becomes relevant to the lives of a wider group of readers.
Customer Reviews:
comfortable in London, half way between New York and Cracow.........2007-03-25
I will not refer to the book itself as so many have reviewed it already. I just wish to make a brief comment, in addition to stating that it is a good book
The author, Eva Hoffmann, would never have written this particular book if, when leaving Poland, her mother had had the last word on where to immigrate to, North America or Israel. She had preferred Israel and the anxt, the feeling of being torn between two cultures would not have haunted her enough to write a book. I too have been transplanted. In my case at least three time but possibly five. As right through my cultural identity was always clear to me as Jewish, I could move from culture to culture without feeling that I had to be "translated" into them. Only few will understand what I am trying to say: had she been better grounded in her Jewish culture and identity, she would never have felt such conflict.
On the other hand, for those of us who have experienced her "angst" though in a lower dose, the book is a useful projection of something that could not be understood except as such a total and essential question; magnified for the sake of study.
If not London, but Jerusalem would have made Eva Hoffmann feel comfortable, she would be a less anxious (neurotic?) person but perhaps a lesser thinker. This is a book to keep even after reading it. It is almost a reference book.
Lost in Translation.......2007-01-04
A wonderful book on moving from one culture to another and one language to another--Polish to English. Anyone who has had this experience will immediately identify with the author. Eva Hoffman writes beautifully about every nuance of her family's move as a young teenager from Communist Poland to Canada. Cultures that are superficially similar turn out to be very different and the effect on family life is staggering.
Lost, But Found As Well.......2007-01-01
Hoffman's description of Poland in the Communist years following World War II is riveting, and so is her narrative of life in the U.S. following her arrival here at age 13. But what impresses me most about this book is its assured writing style, and the author's ability to skip back and forth from one decade and year to another without boring or losing the reader. Hoffman is an unusually gifted writer. I am using her text as a teaching tool for a would-be memoir/autobiographer. Thank heaven her parents survived the Holocaust and brought her to us.
Enlightening description of immigration and languages.......2006-12-16
I started reading this wonderful book 6 months before I left Brazil towards Israel. After finishing the first Part (Paradise) I just could not keep on reading, and I abandoned the book for a while. After I landed in Israel I re-took the book and was delighted again with the realness of it. A thought occurred to me that the reading was so descriptive of the immigration sentiment that I just could not understand it before immigrating myself.
The book helped me to understand and to organize the infinite sensations that come with the leaving/arriving to another country. How the language affects the way we think and act, how sadness and happiness are mingled into one strange feeling, how we cope and forget without noticing, and how we urge to succeed and prove that we can be part of the new country.
In addition, the book also brought to me new feelings and curiosities about my grandparents, whom also escaped from Poland and Russia in the late 40's. Hoffman describes so well how the old traditions and languages influenced the new live of those who left their country because of prejudice and persecution!
One passage that I am specially fond of: "No, I'm no patriot, nor was I ever allowed to be. And yet, the country of my childhood lives within me with a primacy that is a form of love. (...) All it has given me is the world, but that is enough. It has fed me language, perceptions, sounds, the human kind. It has given me the colors and the furrows of reality, my first loves. The absoluteness of those loves can never be recaptured: no geometry of the landscape, no haze in the air, will live in us as intensely as the landscapes that we saw as the first, and to which we gave ourselves wholly, without reservations." It reminds me of Wordsworth when he writes about Tintern Abbey.
A wonderful life-changing book.
a classic.......2006-06-19
I loved this book when it came out and I love it still many rereadings later. This portrait of the Wandering Jew as a young girl begins with Hoffman's childhood in Cracow, Poland just after the second world war; moves to Vancouver, British Columbia when she is thirteen; continues on to Texas and Massachusetts for her university years; and ends in New York, where she becomes a writer and an editor at the New York Times Book Review. It encompasses many themes: the defining power of language; the cost of changing cultures, the construction of personal identity, and the consequences, for many Jews, of the Nazi and Communist regimes. Hoffman was born in the summer of 1945. Like many Jews in post-war, Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, the Hoffmans observed Passover and had home-baked challah, on shabbat but Eva was culturally Polish, reading Sienkiewicz's nationalistic novels, playing Chopin etudes, attending church with her friends, receiving gifts on St. Nicholas's Day. After emigration, she adapts to North American culture, first Canadian, then Texan, then New York. This is a memoir squarely in the Jewish immigrant tradition but one in which the immigrant is a graduate student at Harvard, and relates her situation not only to Mary Antin but to contexts laid out by Sartre and Nabokov, Jung and Freud. Lost in Translation contains stories and essays, phrases to ruminate on, ideas to consider. It is a demanding read that challenges its reader to consider her own autobiography, her own childhood, her own assumptions. Having compiled an international bibliography of Jewish women's non-fiction books with poet Irena Klepfisz (available on my website) , I can say this is one of my favorites.
Book Description
The much-acclaimed biographer's unflinchingly honest, wise, and forgiving portrait of her own famous parents: two wildly talented Russian émigrés who fled wartime Paris to become one of New York's first and grandest power couples.
Tatiana du Plessix, the wife of a French diplomat, was a beautiful, sophisticated "white Russian" who had been the muse of the famous Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Alexander Liberman, the ambitious son of a prominent Russian Jew, was a gifted magazine editor and aspiring artist. As part of the progressive artistic Russian émigré community living in Paris in the 1930s, the two were destined to meet. They began a passionate affair, and the year after Paris was occupied in World War II they fled to New York with Tatiana's young daughter, Francine.
There they determinedly rose to the top of high society, holding court to a Who's Who list of the midcentury's intellectuals and entertainers. Flamboyant and outrageous, bold and brilliant, they were irresistible to friends like Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dalí, and the publishing tycoon Condé Nast. But to those who knew them well they were also highly neurotic, narcissistic, and glacially self-promoting, prone to cut out of their lives, with surgical precision, close friends who were no longer of use to them.
Tatiana became an icon of New York fashion, and the hats she designed for Saks Fifth Avenue were de rigueur for stylish women everywhere. Alexander Liberman, who devotedly raised Francine as his own child from the time she was nine, eventually came to preside over the entire Condé Nast empire. The glamorous life they shared was both creative and destructive and was marked by an exceptional bond forged out of their highly charged love and raging self-centeredness. Their obsessive adulation of success and elegance was elevated to a kind of worship, and the high drama that characterized their lives followed them to their deaths. Tatiana, increasingly consumed with nostalgia for a long-lost Russia, spent her last years addicted to painkillers. Shortly after her death, Alexander, then age eighty, shocked all who knew him by marrying her nurse.
Them: A Portrait of Parents is a beautifully written homage to the extraordinary lives of two fascinating, irrepressible people who were larger than life emblems of a bygone age. Written with honesty and grace by the person who knew them best, this generational saga is a survivor's story. Tatiana and Alexander survived the Russian Revolution, the fall of France, and New York's factory of fame. Their daughter, Francine, survived them.
Customer Reviews:
And Racist too.......2007-08-19
Her parents were indeed revolting.. and it is perhaps instructive to be assured again that all families were not invented by Norman Rockwell. But did she need to do her own revolting racist screed against gypsies to excuse her grandmother's behavior? Not the parents opinion, but her. Quite nasty.
charming memoir.......2007-06-07
I was enchanted by Ms. Gray's beautifully written memoir. She has lived through some dramatic world events with vivid front-line experiences and yet was able to share them in such a personal and loving way. History, accurately recalled, yet presented so naturally, makes for very compelling reading. I loved this book!
A touchstone for thinking of my parents and my life..........2007-04-14
Thank you, Mme. du Plessix Gray for this evocative, brilliant memoir. This was the last book my Mother read before she died in August 2006. She was 10 years older than you, and had the same history, a Russian girl who came to New York, and even dated the same man as you did. She knew all the names in the book and lived the young Russian emigree's life in New York City. Your beautiful writing made me think about the role of my life in that of my parents' lives -- it was just such a great book for me to read in this mourning year. I know this is a highly personal reaction but I am hoping you will read this review. Your book unleashed a dreamlike state for me to probe into the colorful lives of my mother, father, grandparents, aunts, uncles -- from whom I am descended. The dead have informed our lives and are always with us. It is a gift.
Hypnotic and Revolting.......2007-03-08
I'm a fan of Francine du Plessix Gray ("The Women of the Marquis de Sade" is stunning) so I picked up this book with anticipation.
Mrs.du Plessix Gray did not let me down but the parents she is remembering in this "trio-biography" left me absolutely cold. Plessix Gray takes us through her mother's life in Russia, the literary world there, the Revolution, her escape to France, their Parisian life, meeting Alexander Leiberman, their life as a family in war-time France and finally imigration to New York. It is from the time of that new life in New York that "THEM" began to start gripping my throat. One watches the rise of the Leibermans in the fashion and art worlds of uptown New York in the 1950s and 1960s with astonishment and incredulity. They appeared to me to be of modest talents but had the exquisite knack of being in the right place at the right time, were fully convinced of their own superiority in addition to being snobs of the first order. Plus, as exotic, artistic European refugees they were fashionable just after the war and they knew how to throw a party. Voila: Attitude + Style + Connections + New York = SUCCESS (it was ever thus). It is the evolving psychological portrait that she draws of Tatiana of Saks and Leiberman of Conde-Nast that is chilling then disgusting and in the end pathetic, that held me in a hypnotic state, like a snake with a frog. It's a very interesting voyeristic look at a world that has a minimum of interest for me but it is a world that had a certain significance on American culture for good or for bad. What really captured me was Francine's own story, her childhood, her relationship with "THEM" (as if you could have one) her teens & young adult life on into her adult married and professional life. So there she was, a natural writer, being given a ringside seat to this peculiar, manipulating, ambitious couple of human beings joined together for lives that came to no good end. Yes for me it was Francine who shines through both as an evolving human being and a writer, writing in her smooth, clear voice, that made it a worthwhile read. The truth is that I could hardly put it down but by the time I did I immeadiately wanted a bath, a shower and a shampoo.
Fabulous.......2006-10-04
I absolutely loved this book. Du Plessix Gray describes her parents' lives with insight, intelligence, honesty and humor. She offers us a behind-the-scenes look into a world that its inhabitants were obsessed with keeping hidden from view. The degree to which her parents' lives intersected with the history of the twentieth century is amazing. Unlike most memoirs, Du Plessix Gray delves deeply into the historical context. The pace never lags; I was enthralled from the first page to the last.
Book Description
Lara Vapnyar, author of the prizewinning story collection There Are Jews in My House, brings us a poignant and comic first novel about a delightfully sincere modern-day muse. We meet Tanya as a typical Russian girl, living with her bookish professor mother in a drab Soviet apartment. As a teenager, Tanya becomes obsessed with Dostoevsky and settles on her life’s calling: she will be the companion to a great writer. Her memoirs tell of her immigration to New York after college, the stifling expectations of her Brighton Beach cousins, and the crucial moment in a bookshop on the Upper West Side, where Tanya attends a reading by Mark Schneider, a Significant New York Novelist.
Tanya soon moves in with Mark, ready to dazzle in bed, to serve and inspire . . . if only he would spend a little more time writing and a little less time at the gym, the shrink, and the literary soirees where she feels hopelessly unglamorous and out of place. But as she gradually learns to read English—struggling to better understand Mark’s work and her true role as Muse—Tanya also learns more than she expected about the destiny she has imagined for herself.
Animated by Vapnyar’s beguiling grace and vividness—with a narrative richness reflecting the great tradition of Russian realism to which she is a natural heir—Memoirs of a Muse is an altogether wonderful novel. It is a lively meditation on female capabilities and happiness, on the mysteries of artistic inspiration (and the absurdities of artistic life), and, perhaps most movingly, on the pain and wonder of the immigrant experience in New York City.
Customer Reviews:
Problems of a Muse.......2007-09-17
Imagine deciding to become a muse to a famous author when you grow up! That is just what Tatiana (Tanya) Rumer does in this very readable, comic and original novel. The problem is that Tanya craves to become a bad girl muse rather a good girl one. Her model is Apollinaria (Polina) Suslova, Fedor Dostoevsky's muse. She vows to become like Polina and never like the "devoted, calm, domesticated" Anna Grigorievna, Dostoevsky's wife.
Unfortunately for Tanya, things do not go as planned with her writer, but there is a wonderful suprise ending for her ambition. This is a charming story with a twist of Russian irony.
Chick-Lit with Telegraphed Punch.......2007-04-15
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Ms. Vapnyar constructs lovely sentences of well-chosen words. The main story is juxtaposed with a fabricated diary of Dostoevsky's mistress, whom the heroine, Tanya, of "Memoirs" admires. The entire book is set in Simoncini Garamond, but a second typeface would have served well to delineate between Tanya's writing and the 19th Century diaries of Polina. (This book was published by Mark Z. Danielewski's house, Pantheon Books. They *know* about typeface changes!)
"Memoirs" would have been an excellent piece of short fiction, but it's been padded at the beginning with 88 pages of narrative about the female protagonist's childhood which does nothing for the story. This is almost half of the 212-page book. The second half of the book is much better than the first 88 pages.
The Loss of Self in Another.......2006-11-28
Tanya lives in Moscow with her professor mother upon whose bedroom wall is an array of pictures of the greats of Russian literature. The young Tanya is fascinated by the portrait of Dosstoyevsky. She spends her time reading about him and is especially fascinated by his stormy relationship with the charismatic yet difficult Polina Suslova Dostoyevsky's mistress. When Polina ends their relatioinship Dostoyevsky marries an unpreposssing girl, Anna Grigorievna, 24 years his junior. Anna is placid of temperament, tending to the needs of the great writer. Young Tanya decides it is her destiny to be the muse of a great man, to be the spark that ignites his great female characters as Polina did for Dostoyevsky.
Tanya is an attractive but otherwise unremarkable student who receives her college degree in history writing on such topics as the history of Russian makeup, and breakfast in ancient Rome. After having graduated she receives an opportunity to go to New York to live with her aunt and uncle, poor emigres trying to make lives for themselves and fit into the alien American culture. Finally her chance to be a muse comes when she meets Mark, a published writer at a reading in an upper West Side bookstore.
The much older Mark is a classic narcissist. He has little interest in Tanya's thoughts, memories even her sexual pleasure. She spends her days tending to his needs, waiting to inspire Mark to begin a new novel. In the process she abandons a career or even just a job and is being 'kept' by Mark as her professor mother reminds her during phone calls to Moscow. But as the years go on Tanya begins to suspect that something is wrong with their relationship. When Mark begins to write a new novel, and Tanya discovers in a biography of Dostoyevsky Mark's real thoughts about her, her belief in the importance of being a muse begins to unravel.
Although the progress of the relationship with Mark is predictable the juxtaposition of the relationship between Dostoyevsky and Polina, Dostoyevsky and Anna and Tanya's own life makes for an engrossing story. Along the way Vapnyar provides insights into the difficulties of the immigrant experience and what it means to lose one's sense of self in another. This is Vapnyar's first novel. She is a fine writer to be watched.
A Fascinating first Novel.......2006-11-20
Tanya is probably one of the most interesting characters I've encountered in a while. Growing up in Russia, she idolized the writer Dostoyevsky, after first seeing his picture as a little girl. Growing up, she hears of Dostoyevsky's muse, a spirited woman who inspirited him to write. At the suggestion of a teacher who is highly attracted to her, she realizes that she too wants to be a muse. She wants to inspire greatness and achieve immortality by having her actions inspire great art. When she travels to America as a young woman, she meets a frustrated writer who seems to be in need of a muse, and seems to be very interested in her. Tanya is overjoyed at first, but as time passes she realizes that something is not quite right about their relationship. As we read Tanya's story we also get to see Polina's story, the life of Dostoyevsky's muse as seen through Tanya's imagination.
There are a lot of great things about this story. As I said before, Tanya is an interesting complex character. As this slim volume is a coming of age story, we see all of the events that make her into the woman that she becomes. The story begins with her life in Russia and her relationship with her family (probably some of my favorite chapters in the book). We see her sexual maturation. We see her fascination with what many people consider to be the mundane and shallow parts of history, such as what people in the 19th century wore for makeup and used for birth control. We also get to see her life as a Russian immigrant. Tanya's move from one walk of life to another is very true to life. The book is written in a dreamy manner that makes it very pleasant to read. Yet my only complaint is perhaps it is too dreamy. Throughout the novel, all off the filler is simply skimmed over but by the end, I felt as if some of what was skimmed over could have been gone into a little more. I wanted to see more of this transformation that was so important for our main character. I wanted to slow down for a bit and watch as her time as a muse ends.
Beyond that speed bump, the story was highly enjoyable. This is an impressive first novel!
Couldn't put it down!.......2006-06-28
Vapnyar is one of those writers who is able to write in a way that transports readers to the scene - I felt, I smelled, I heard, I giggled... I couldn't put the book down.
This is a story of a Russian girl with a rich imagination and a longing for a life that is lived "to the utmost degree!". "But now I was fifteen, and that long-anticipated extraordinary talent still hadn't emerged. My many gifts rattled about like cheap jewelry in a sequined bag - there wasn't a single gemstone. Now what kind of fulfilling life could the likes of me lead?" Her language is honest and sincere (with ought being rude or shocking) and puts the story on a very intimate and familiar level.
Customer Reviews:
A fascinating lens.......2006-11-03
Gage writes his and his family's story with a wonderful combination of pathos and humour--an incredible perspective and a worthwhile read.
Highly recommended.......2006-11-03
This is as an extraordinary book by one of our country's most important contemporary writers. Highly recommended!
Book Description
Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan is a monumental and pathbreaking study of early Irish Protestant and Catholic migration to America. Through exhaustive research and sensitive analyses of the letters, memoirs, and other writings, the authors describe the variety and vitality of early Irish immigrant experiences, ranging from those of frontier farmers and seaport workers to revolutionaries and loyalists. Largely through the migrants own words, it brings to life the networks, work, and experiences of these immigrants who shaped the formative stages of American society and its Irish communities. The authors explore why Irishmen and women left home and how they adapted to colonial and revolutionary America, in the process creating modern Irish and Irish-American identities on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Product Description
Wings of Change is a story about becoming; it is about becoming American, becoming a parent, and embracing life with exuberance. It is a memoir about one woman's experience emigrating as a young person from Holland to the United States and the challenges she faced as she acclimated to a rural New Hampshire way of life. It is about her unflinching lover for her husband and children and the adventures that tested and taught them along the way. The tale begins in Holland in the 1950's when, with a mix of trepidation and great faith, newlywed Titia Bozuwa emigrates to the United States with her optimistic and adventure-loving husband whose dream is to practice general medicine in a small town. Through the lens of her Dutch background, Bozuwa shares keen insights on America's openness and freedom, revels in the generosity and eccentricity of her New Hampshire neighbors, and makes wry observations about the ways in which cultures collide. Through her storytelling the reader is always aware of Bozuwa's two cultures: the more formal social structures of her beloved Holland and the beauty and promise of her new home in rural New England.
Customer Reviews:
NH Produces Another Thornton Wilder?.......2007-06-10
A great read! The characters in Titia Bozuwa's "Wings of Change" are purported to come from her home town of Wakefield, NH. That may be so, but they must all have been born in Thornton Wilder's Grover's Corner! Bozuwa's book not only shares the colors of New England's towns and personalities with Wilder's "Our Town", but she shares Wilder's uncanny ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Chapter after chapter she paints vignettes of life which make us smile or laugh outright. Many bring tears to our eyes. And at the end we are sad that there are no more chapters! Has Thornton Wilder been reborn?
Wings of Change is not to be missed!.......2007-03-29
Wings of Change is a gem of a book...so beautifully written. I couldn't put it down; I laughed and cried with each chapter. It brought me back to my own childhood of the 60's. It's an insightful and candid memoir with vivid details that provide a compelling picture of the challenges this Dutch immigrant faced making her way in a new land. So timely as the immigration debate rages on....
A delight of a book that any age will enjoy!
An immigrant's response.......2007-02-06
I came to know Titia after she had already lived in Wakefield for a long time, yet I knew many of the people in her book. They all came alive in gorgeous pictures. Her story paralled my first years in this country in more ways than one and the tears of those years filled my eyes all over again. However, Titia's wisdom, courage, and humor also brought laughter to my heart. The feelings are so true. Many of the thoughts she had about her new life are similar to mine. Those first five years were very difficult and I remind myself of that whenever I meet immigrants and refugees. Not knowing the depth of the language, not understanding the jokes, not grasping the way of life, all makes for a challenging time. But the generosity of the people and the wealth of opportunities of the new life more than offset the homesickness and the strangeness. Titia got it all right and described it with grace and beauty. Thank you, Titia, for expressing the pain and joys of the immigrant.
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- Having a Mary Spirit: Allowing God to Change Us from the Inside Out
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- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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