We have a two-fer today. I originally reviewed this book in 2008.
Out of Line: Growing Up Soviet, by Tina Grimberg. Published 2007 by Tundra Books. Nonfiction. Memoir.
Out of Line: Growing Up Soviet, by Tina Grimberg, is a vivid, affecting memoir of a childhood and adolescence spent in Ukraine under the Soviet regime. Grimberg,
now a rabbi in Canada, lived in the former Soviet Union until she was
15 and emigrated with her family to Indiana. The book is a memoir about
growing up in a world that doesn't exist anymore.
Grimberg's narrative jumps back and forth through the years, from early childhood to her emigration. Grimberg
frames her narrative in terms of a young girl and her family doing what
they needed to do to survive- queueing up in long lines, working
connections for that extra little luxury that made life bearable and
worthwhile. The reader gets to know her parents, deeply in love with
each other and devoted to their two children, Tina and her older sister
Natasha; we meet her grandparents, especially Inna (always "Babushka
Inna"), who changed her name from the Jewish Ginda
to the more ethnically indeterminate Inna to fit in, and a small cast
of friends and some family members who passed away before Grimberg was born.
Throughout the book the tone is warm and affectionate but not really sentimental; Grimberg
depicts a loving family struggling to survive and is open about the
trials of life as a Jewish family under the anti-Semitic, anti-religious
Soviet regime, as well as her own lapses and failings. One of the most
touching, albeit sad, anecdotes in the entirety of this slim volume is
when Grimberg
tells us the time she rode on the bus with Babushka Inna and heard Inna
speaking Yiddish with another Jewish woman. After a brief altercation
with another passenger they got off the bus; then little Tina told her
grandmother never to speak Yiddish in public again, so ashamed was she
of the attention it attracted. She speaks then of the heavy, loaded
silence and shame that lived between her and Babushka Inna for the rest
of the day, even as Babushka lovingly laid out Tina's nightclothes and
put her to bed. I have Russian Jewish friends who escaped like Grimberg's
family did and most of the time they don't like to talk about their
more painful experiences, or only do in general terms, but this anecdote
in particular brought something home to me about the damage done to
families and to people by the Soviet system.
We also see some other aspects of Soviet life. Through her grandparents'
story we see the terrible price the Soviet people paid for World War
II, with nearly every family missing that entire generation of men; we
see the role played by that generation of women, including Babushka
Inna, as essential childrearers and neighborhood watchdogs. We see privations and little victories, such as when Grimberg is able to buy flowers for her mother for Women's Day even after the florist has sold out.
Grimberg
draws herself as a basically happy, normal little girl and although her
circumstances were grim, we have to remember that the story has a happy
ending for the Grimberg
family, however unlikely it may have seemed to them even up to the very
moment they boarded the train for western Europe. I'm grateful for them
that they made it, and grateful for being able to read this sweet,
moving book. Out of Line gives
some great insights into everyday life in a time and place that shaped a
lot of people and is definitely worth checking out. Aimed at young
adults, I think it would be a great read for teens (or anyone)
interested in the former Soviet Union, in Jewish life there, and in the
world that was swept away with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Rating: BUY
FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.
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