© Tatiana Shymanova, 2016

© Esfera, illustrations, 2016

ISBN 978-5-4474-3844-9

Created with intellectual publishing system Ridero

My 20+ Years In America

In the West, today, the popular imagination has bent Eastern Europe into a barbarous, backwards swath of contested land forever haunted by the histories of the Soviet Bloc. But these geographies hold homes, hold loves, hold lives; no matter the pain or torments, countries like Ukraine and Siberia were and are the scenes of childhood— replete with all the joys and grief of existence itself. Tatyana Shimanova’s autobiographical novel, My 20+ Years In America, paints this dynamic picture, placing her homeland front and center and subjecting it to both leveled criticism and beautiful nostalgia, creating a melancholic and moving narrative out of her own struggles and successes.

My 20+ Years In America trembles with arresting prose, thoughtful meditations, and a universality essential to any and all autobiographies. The specificities of time and place allow for lush detail and a poetic verisimilitude, but the essence of Ms. Shimanova’s story is as primal as any bildungsroman— from Goethe to Sedaris. My 20+ Years In America, however, with its pertinence to the current global stage, functions just as well as a contemporary allegory, as a humanizing symbol of the ontology of the late 20^th century, the intertwining narratives and circumstances of the marginalized that shaped our society today.

But, throughout it all, Ms. Shimanova stays true to herself, true to her own truth, if you will. Beyond the evocativeness of the writing and the nuance of the characters, the clear honesty of the hand penning these pages shines through, underpins every word, like confession, or salvation. This is the true task of the autobiographer— and Tatyana Shimanova has achieved this arduous task with flying colors.

– Charles Asher, PBK Reviews

Clarion Rewiew

Memoirs dealing with immigration and the prevailing belief that people can better their lives and the lives of their children are often sentimental and hold the sympathy of the reader with vivid, emotional descriptions of events. However, Tatyana Shimanova’s writing is spare, mirroring the physical coldness of her surroundings growing up in Siberia and the Ukraine as well as the cold shoulder she encounters when she finally reaches America.

My 20+ Years In America begins in present-day America with Tonya (a character based on the author) driving to work and remembering her sister and mother. The story flashes back and forth from past to present without purpose, making it difficult to follow at times. When the narrator digs into an event or a relationship, however, readers will be invested. Unfortunately, the challenge of maintaining that investment is not always met.

Tonya’s childhood and adolescence are explained quickly at the beginning of the book; by page twenty-seven, she is already leaving for college. Readers are given only a cursory view of the incredible pain and grief that have shaped Tonya’s young life. As Tonya ages and she navigates love, career, marriage, and motherhood in a climate of political and economic hardship, the book’s pace changes, and the quality of the narrative voice improves. Tonya struggles between her need for help and the pride that keeps her from asking for it. Even when her son is in the hospital, she struggles to ask a doctor for help. That pride may explain why the narrator has difficulty giving voice to so many of the emotions Tonya must be feeling. When Tonya decides to move to America with her youngest son, she risks forging a passport. In doing so, she creates a bureaucratic nightmare for herself. She travels for hours to appear in court, only to be told to return another day. She asks for asylum, but the changing laws don’t protect her. The hope that Tonya will find community, employment, and a home of her own propel the reader through a thick forest of new hardships that, frankly, don’t seem like an improvement over her life in the Ukraine. As she settles into her life as a caregiver, at the same time dodging red tape and worrying about her sons, there is one last story Tonya has to tell. This is probably the most heartfelt and well-written chapter in the book. Tonya has had a lifelong love affair with the piano, and when she becomes caregiver to the aging musician John Leiberman, the two forge a unique and beautiful friendship. Unfortunately, the sun doesn’t stay out long for Tonya. With so little power and position in her new country, it seems that she is fated to always be struggling against the wind. Shimlec clearly has a powerful story to tell, and the book’s cover makes the protagonist’s lonely struggle evident from the start. Readers would better connect emotionally with Tonya’s hardships had the author written at a more even pace and with a less disjointed chronology.

Sara Hartley

My 20+ Years In America
Based on a true story

Summary

Tatyana Shymanova’s novel My 20+ Years In America, based on a true story, includes moving, sometimes joyous, sometimes harrowing stories of her childhood and coming of age in Siberia and Ukraine. Follow her dedication to studying and teaching piano, growing up and falling in love, her marriage and children, and her journey to the United States, in which a fateful decision changed her and her younger son’s lives forever. The author’s struggle for survival on two continents alternately inspires hope, admiration, and outrage.

Dedicated to my grandchildren

Jane-Alexandra and Johnathan

Many thanks to my editor Anita Gallers and all of the people without whom this book would not have been written: Ksenia and Yevgeniya Luzanov, Faye Minsky, Helena McCone and the man entrusted with the task of translating the poetry, Benjamin Phinney

Chapter 1

The alarm was about to stop ringing when Tonya’s¹ mind gradually returned from the fuzzy realm of her dreams back to reality. She had no idea how long the alarm had been on before she awoke, but now as she lay fully conscious, the unrelenting buzz jarred the stillness of the early morning, urging her to begin her day. She hadn’t slept well that night, tossing and turning in the sheets and blanket that now lay crumpled in a heap at the foot of the bed. Gazing out the window, she could just make out the streaks of orange and yellow that colored the sky before the sun finally broke through into morning. She slowly reached out to the clock, fumbled around for the snooze button and enjoyed a few more seconds of silence. It always took a fighting effort to get herself out of bed, but she knew that she could not trust her body to stay there a minute longer.

Arriving late to work was certainly never an option, no matter how much her body yearned for those extra minutes of rest. Tonya was used to this life by now: for the last 7 years she had worked as a private CNA in the Boston area, finding jobs by word of mouth. She had tried to fit her entire life perfectly into this unrelenting schedule for the majority of her existence. She finally pulled herself up into a seated position on the edge of the bed while her feet blindly stroked the floor, searching in the darkness for the slippers she was sure she had left there the night before. The wooden floor felt cold to her feet, and she was relieved when she found the first shoe, then the second, and felt the warmth envelop her. She stood slowly, still in the haze of sleep, and made her way to the bathroom. It was already 5:00 a.m. when Tonya turned on the shower and felt the cool drops of water fall onto her face, awakening herself in preparation for the upcoming day. She thought ahead to the fast-approaching drive to work.

While most people would balk at an hour and a half roundtrip commute, Tonya relished these hours; it was the only time when she belonged completely to herself. On most days her mind would wander back in time through her memories, settling on her hometown where she was born and raised with her parents and only sister, Ludmila. Wistfully, she imagined her sister’s beautiful face and what she might have looked like today. She would have been sixty years old this year if she had lived, but instead, this year commemorated the thirty-seventh anniversary of her death. How unfair it had been for her to die in the prime of her life at the young age of twenty-three, eight months pregnant with her first and only child, who was never given a chance to experience life!

Tonya checked the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of her face, her features so similar to those of her sister. The grief of her loss never completely went away. It came and went like the waves of the ocean tide. She thought again of her sister, and how everyone who came into contact with her admired her beauty, artistic talents and academic excellence. She had graduated high school with a silver medal, earning only a single B in physical education, then attended the Institute of Technology, where she was accepted after passing a test in mathematics with an A. (Students who graduated High School with medals had the privilege of taking a test in only one subject, and if they got an A, they were automatically accepted.)

Tonya’s mother, Frola, had passed away one year before Ludmila at the young age of 50. Tonya often struggled to recall a happy memory of her childhood and of a time when she could have possibly bonded or shared a special moment with her mother, but they always escaped her. Although she could never remember a time when her mother was affectionate toward her, showering her with hugs and kisses as the mothers of other children had done, she came to have a reserved respect for her. As the years went on and Tonya experienced the trials of womanhood for herself, she realized that her mother had been an unhappy woman. She had reluctantly married her father after tragically losing the true love of her life, as well as the only child that they had together. Did she love Tonya’s father? Her marriage was probably like the final straw that someone desperately grabs onto to survive and continue on with her life. Tonya and her mother did not part well before her death, and every time Tonya looked back in her memory, she was filled with regret.

Frola was merely a baby when her own mother brought her to Siberia to escape the tribulations of the Russian Civil War between the Bolshevik Red Army and the loosely formed anti-Bolshevik White Army. Their fighting plagued the entire country, but it was an exceptional hardship to a woman who also happened to be the wife of a White Army officer. After her husband was killed, her life and those of her children were in grave danger, and in her haste and frantic attempt to shield her children from such horrors, she fled with only the possessions that she could efficiently carry in a small baby carriage and in her hands. A few well-tailored dresses, a small icon of Saint Nicholas that could fit in the palm of your hand, and a few silver spoons, which she later traded for bread, were the only items of value that she managed to hide during her expropriation. She carried on with her two little children and left behind the only life that she had known in the hopes of garnering a better future in the unknown lands of the north.

Frola’s mother eventually found herself journeying with a group of refugees who were moving farther East to the barren lands of Siberia for various reasons; some were trying to escape to alter their identity, and others were attempting to escape famine, which had settled all over the Ukraine. Her status as the wife of a White Army officer brought with it the potential for danger wherever she traveled, so she discarded all of her documents and lived anonymously when she eventually settled down in the Krasnoyarsk region.

Before the Russian Revolution, political as well as criminal exiles had been banished there. Its barren landscape made planting particularly difficult, and its inhabitants constantly worried about the availability of sustenance.