I haven't given recent Russian immigrants too much thought over the last several years except when I visit my mother in the Philadelphia suburbs. She often complains about the Russians who live next door. They are too loud, their dog barks constantly, they smoke, they don't even say hello to her. I don't disagree with her, but I am able to sympathize more with the Russians. It's easy for me to be generous towards them, I only visit a few days a year. It must be hard coming to a new country. I found it hard living in the Philadelphia suburbs after being born in Philadelphia. Can you imagine coming all the way from Russia and ending up in suburban sprawl?
I also don't bring up that my mother is descended from Russian Jews. Perhaps that would make things worse because I'm pretty sure her neighbors aren't Jewish. They are just Russian. Maybe even descendants of the Russians that chased my family out of the motherland. Still, we all have that common immigrant experience lurking in our past. In my mother's family those early immigrant days (now well over 100-years ago) have been forgotten and replaced with generations of American lawyers. I imagine that when my family came from Russia and landed in the teeming Lower East Side that it was an overcrowded, noisy, communal place where everyone was struggling to survive.
It seems not just generations, but worlds apart from what contemporary Russian immigrants must experience. In Ellen Litman's brilliant debut book of short stories The Last Chicken in America, it is the lives of newly arrived Russian Jews in Pittsburgh that she sensitively portrays. It isn't easy for her characters to find their way in 1990s America, although their triumphs and tribulations are always entertaining in Litman's deft prose. Litman, who came from Moscow in 1992, writes with almost a painful realism and it is easy to imagine that her personal experience saturates many of these tales.
Masha, the main character of several of the stories, is a teenager just starting college who has to contend with the isolation and the difficulties of immigrating. She is just a couple of years younger than Litman and it's tempting to read her experience as a reflection of Litman's own. In an email interview with Litman I asked her about the desolation of her characters and her own feelings about immigrating.
" The people in the book immigrate (often from big cities), and their choices, by necessity, are suddenly confined to this relatively small immigrant community. Some fit in, others don’t. Some find it comforting, others suffocating. For me it felt very lonely, and I spent a long time wanting desperately to break into the larger world and not knowing how."
Her story "What Do You Dream of, Cruiser Aurora?" perhaps best captures the loneliness and the sense of not fitting in. Unlike the other stories, Litman focuses on an elderly man, Liberman, who has emig
rated to Pittsburgh to join his daughter's family. He is completely out of sorts and even the tentative friendship he forms with an older Russian woman who immigrated at the same time is fraught with missteps and emotional peril. I was amazed with Litman's ability, in her debut work, to write so movingly and authentically about a character that was both male and of a different generation. I asked her about the story's inspiration.
"I was thinking of my grandfather. He came to the US with us, so his situation was different. But I was imagining someone with his kind of spirit. He used to be this wonderful gregarious man, a Navy captain in retirement, a prankster....In the story, Liberman’s daughter tells him that elderly people come to America and “bloom.” And for some it’s true: they adjust, learn some English, find their place in the immigrant community. But for others, like Liberman, it’s the opposite. They break down. My grandfather passed away last year. He’d never found that new life for himself."
I don't want to leave people with the impression that Litman's collection is a downer. She's writing about difficult issues, but her wry voice and humorous take on both American and Russian society provide the book with a true sense of levity. In one of the collection's funniest tales titled "Russian Club," Masha joins a club with a bunch of students at her college who idealize Russia. She wants to fit in, to feel more American and ends up feeling more Russian.
She eventually can't help but disabuse the naive students of their notions of Russia. As they plan to collect money to give the Russian's for medical supplies, Masha tells them "They'll take your money. They'll tell you thank you very much, and then they'll turn around and buy some office furniture or maybe build a summer cottage for their child."
Litman relates that the post-communist era was not a happy one in Russia. "Moscow was a grim place when we left it. (It has changed a lot since then, and from what I know, is actually quite glamorous and expensive these days – though I haven’t been back.) I think it was hard not be disillusioned about it. The democratic leaders we at first believed in turned out to be as corrupt as their communist predecessors. Corruption was pretty much everywhere."
The stories that Litman tells of Pittsburgh's Russian community aren't great because of the setting or the ethnic milieu. Instead, what makes this a truly remarkable collection is the memorable characters that she creates. The fact that she illuminates a particular population adds depth to the stories, but her characters are so strong, so original that they take over each story and make it both unique and universal at the same time. I first read these stories three months ago and not a day goes by that I don't think of one of her characters. I asked her if she had any advice on creating characters for aspiring writers.
"For me, one way to discover who the characters are is to put them on the page and let them talk – in other words, write a scene with them, try to get a sense what their voice is like. Other times, I start with an image, especially if it’s the kind of character whose appearance/presence makes an impression on others."
Litman has been touring extensively behind this book and wrote a great piece about returning to Pittsburgh for a reading in the blog The Debutante Ball. She has also been keeping her own blog Last Chicken which has some entertaining stories about how readers have reacted to her book.
Here is the complete transcript of my interview with her. Litman's answers are in blue.
KBC: Can you describe how it feels to have your first collection published? I know it's a dream of many booksellers (probably half of the staff at my store) and just about everyone who participates in a writing group. Is it like you expected? Was it a thrill to get the finished book in your hands? How about seeing the New York Times review?
EL: Good question. It’s sort of a mixed bag. I’m very happy, on the one hand, but also constantly anxious, worrying whether the book will do well, whether I’m doing enough to promote it, whether I should be promoting it at all. I’m doing a lot of traveling and readings these days – and I think it’s the right thing to do – but I also feel like I should be back home working on the next book. When I published my first short story, a teacher of mine told me to treasure that moment, because no matter how much I publish in the future, I’d never feel such pure joy as I did then. He was right. It’s almost as if we get too “greedy” later on. I think I’ll be the happiest when I get back to my regular routine. And hopefully in a couple of months it will sink in that yes, I had my first book published and it turned out okay (mistakes and all), and now I’m working again, working on something that hopefully will be stronger and better.
KBC: The immigrants in The Last Chicken in America seem rather isolated and lonely. Do you think this is a result of their Russian culture? Or is it just the plight of immigrants coming to an American society that has turned inward, obsessed with television and computers? Or are these just the characters that interest you?
EL: I think that what happens – or at least what happened in my case – is, the world shrinks a little. The people in the book immigrate (often from big cities), and their choices, by necessity, are suddenly confined to this relatively small immigrant community. Some fit in, others don’t. Some find it comforting, others suffocating. For me it felt very lonely, and I spent a long time wanting desperately to break into the larger world and not knowing how. So I guess, my characters inherited that sense of isolation.
KBC: Many of the stories involve Masha, a college-age girl, new to the United States? How much does she share with your own background? Was coming from Moscow in the 1990s as difficult as it seems in the stories?
EL: I was a few years older than Masha when we came to the US in 1992. I had finished two years of college by then – in computers, naturally – and later transferred to the University of Pittsburgh, and then spent 6+ years working in IT, before turning to writing. So there are definitely some similarities. But yeah, the first few years were pretty hard, especially for my parents. They’d left so much behind, and now they had to start over somehow, and they were just learning English at the time. Plus they had me and my younger sister to worry about. Plus my grandmother, who was very sick. There was so much uncertainty. We were all struggling in our own ways, and we didn’t always know how to help one another.
KBC: I was most touched by the plight of Liberman in the story "What Do You Dream of, Cruiser Aurora?" The complexity of immigrating as an older person and trying to connect to something is beautifully rendered in this story. Can you talk about the inspiration for it?
EL: I was thinking of my grandfather. He came to the US with us, so his situation was different. But I was imagining someone with his kind of spirit. He used to be this wonderful gregarious man, a Navy captain in retirement, a prankster… Getting old is difficult regardless of the country, and immigration, of course, throws an extra twist into it. In the story, Liberman’s daughter tells him that elderly people come to America and “bloom.” And for some it’s true: they adjust, learn some English, find their place in the immigrant community. But for others, like Liberman, it’s the opposite. They break down. My grandfather passed away last year. He’d never found that new life for himself. He had us, but we were always busy or too far way. And he just got smaller and sadder each year.
KBC: In the Russian Club you bring up the irony of an actual Russian being in the Russian club. It's a hilarious story about a naive group of Americans who want to travel to Moscow and bring money for medical supplies. Masha tells them "They'll take your money. They'll tell you thank you very much, and then they'll turn around and buy some office furniture or maybe build a summer cottage for their child." Can you comment of this story and perhaps on having to disillusion idealistic Americans about Russia?
EL: Moscow was a grim place when we left it. (It has changed a lot since then, and from what I know, is actually quite glamorous and expensive these days – though I haven’t been back.) I think it was hard not be disillusioned about it. The democratic leaders we at first believed in turned out to be as corrupt as their communist predecessors. Corruption was pretty much everywhere. But for Masha the issue isn’t really the fate of Russia, but the question of belonging. Initially, the Russian Club for her is a way to become more like Americans, to join them. But instead, it makes her feel more Russian, while at the same time reminding her that as a Jew she never fully belonged in Russia in the first place.
KBC: The stories take place in a fairly desolate and almost soulless Pittsburgh. It's a town that has changed drastically over the past 20 years. It's also a place where there is a pocket of readers for Kashsbookcorner. I dug up a quote from Andy Summers from the Police about the city. "This city gets a dreadful rap... I find it romantic - a city of dreams - emerging from dark umber-stained hills above a river filled with mud and slag." Is there some truth to what he says in your opinion? Or do you think he's just nuts and high from playing a show with the Police?
EL: I actually never thought of Pittsburgh as desolate and soulless. (Though having moved there from Moscow, I did resent its smallness.) I hadn’t seen it during its dark and polluted years. I hadn’t seen its struggle. To me, it always looked clean and neat. Plus it had the rivers, the bridges, and the view from Mount Washington. It wasn’t a bad city, it’s just that I felt trapped in it. I think I first sensed that romantic vibe Andy Summers is talking about when I was reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. He captured it really well.
KBC: The collection is billed as a "novel in stories"? Many of the stories involve Masha, but many don't. How did that label come about? Do you think of it as a novel?
EL: To be honest, the label was a marketing decision. Which is to say, I didn’t decide it. My publisher did. (Is it even okay to admit this?) I was writing the book as a collection of linked stories. I always knew that the stories would be set in the same neighborhood and that there would be some recurring characters. I didn’t know that there would be this thread about Masha. I don’t mind the label though. The book is what it is. It’s made of stories.
KBC: You do a magnificent job in quickly creating memorable characters. Do you have any words of advice to writers? What short story writers do you recommend that people read?
EL: Thank you. For me, one way to discover who the characters are is to put them on the page and let them talk – in other words, write a scene with them, try to get a sense what their voice is like. Other times, I start with an image, especially if it’s the kind of character whose appearance/presence makes an impression on others. As for the recommendations, there are so many! George Saunders, of course. I’ve learned so much from him and his stories, the way he develops his characters and makes them so complex and fallible and good. Mary Gaitskill. She is amazing at describing characters, letting their physical attributes reflect their internal disorder. Seriously, I could make a huge list of writers whose stories influenced and taught me. Denis Johnson, Barry Hannah, Stuart Dybek, Kelly Link… I could go on and on.
KBC: What's next for you? When can we look forward to another brilliant book?
EL: A novel. This time, not in stories. (Though I do plan to keep writing stories.) As for when, let’s hope soon.
I also don't bring up that my mother is descended from Russian Jews. Perhaps that would make things worse because I'm pretty sure her neighbors aren't Jewish. They are just Russian. Maybe even descendants of the Russians that chased my family out of the motherland. Still, we all have that common immigrant experience lurking in our past. In my mother's family those early immigrant days (now well over 100-years ago) have been forgotten and replaced with generations of American lawyers. I imagine that when my family came from Russia and landed in the teeming Lower East Side that it was an overcrowded, noisy, communal place where everyone was struggling to survive.
Masha, the main character of several of the stories, is a teenager just starting college who has to contend with the isolation and the difficulties of immigrating. She is just a couple of years younger than Litman and it's tempting to read her experience as a reflection of Litman's own. In an email interview with Litman I asked her about the desolation of her characters and her own feelings about immigrating.
" The people in the book immigrate (often from big cities), and their choices, by necessity, are suddenly confined to this relatively small immigrant community. Some fit in, others don’t. Some find it comforting, others suffocating. For me it felt very lonely, and I spent a long time wanting desperately to break into the larger world and not knowing how."
Her story "What Do You Dream of, Cruiser Aurora?" perhaps best captures the loneliness and the sense of not fitting in. Unlike the other stories, Litman focuses on an elderly man, Liberman, who has emig
rated to Pittsburgh to join his daughter's family. He is completely out of sorts and even the tentative friendship he forms with an older Russian woman who immigrated at the same time is fraught with missteps and emotional peril. I was amazed with Litman's ability, in her debut work, to write so movingly and authentically about a character that was both male and of a different generation. I asked her about the story's inspiration."I was thinking of my grandfather. He came to the US with us, so his situation was different. But I was imagining someone with his kind of spirit. He used to be this wonderful gregarious man, a Navy captain in retirement, a prankster....In the story, Liberman’s daughter tells him that elderly people come to America and “bloom.” And for some it’s true: they adjust, learn some English, find their place in the immigrant community. But for others, like Liberman, it’s the opposite. They break down. My grandfather passed away last year. He’d never found that new life for himself."
I don't want to leave people with the impression that Litman's collection is a downer. She's writing about difficult issues, but her wry voice and humorous take on both American and Russian society provide the book with a true sense of levity. In one of the collection's funniest tales titled "Russian Club," Masha joins a club with a bunch of students at her college who idealize Russia. She wants to fit in, to feel more American and ends up feeling more Russian.
She eventually can't help but disabuse the naive students of their notions of Russia. As they plan to collect money to give the Russian's for medical supplies, Masha tells them "They'll take your money. They'll tell you thank you very much, and then they'll turn around and buy some office furniture or maybe build a summer cottage for their child."
Litman relates that the post-communist era was not a happy one in Russia. "Moscow was a grim place when we left it. (It has changed a lot since then, and from what I know, is actually quite glamorous and expensive these days – though I haven’t been back.) I think it was hard not be disillusioned about it. The democratic leaders we at first believed in turned out to be as corrupt as their communist predecessors. Corruption was pretty much everywhere."
The stories that Litman tells of Pittsburgh's Russian community aren't great because of the setting or the ethnic milieu. Instead, what makes this a truly remarkable collection is the memorable characters that she creates. The fact that she illuminates a particular population adds depth to the stories, but her characters are so strong, so original that they take over each story and make it both unique and universal at the same time. I first read these stories three months ago and not a day goes by that I don't think of one of her characters. I asked her if she had any advice on creating characters for aspiring writers.
"For me, one way to discover who the characters are is to put them on the page and let them talk – in other words, write a scene with them, try to get a sense what their voice is like. Other times, I start with an image, especially if it’s the kind of character whose appearance/presence makes an impression on others."
Litman has been touring extensively behind this book and wrote a great piece about returning to Pittsburgh for a reading in the blog The Debutante Ball. She has also been keeping her own blog Last Chicken which has some entertaining stories about how readers have reacted to her book.
Here is the complete transcript of my interview with her. Litman's answers are in blue.
KBC: Can you describe how it feels to have your first collection published? I know it's a dream of many booksellers (probably half of the staff at my store) and just about everyone who participates in a writing group. Is it like you expected? Was it a thrill to get the finished book in your hands? How about seeing the New York Times review?
EL: Good question. It’s sort of a mixed bag. I’m very happy, on the one hand, but also constantly anxious, worrying whether the book will do well, whether I’m doing enough to promote it, whether I should be promoting it at all. I’m doing a lot of traveling and readings these days – and I think it’s the right thing to do – but I also feel like I should be back home working on the next book. When I published my first short story, a teacher of mine told me to treasure that moment, because no matter how much I publish in the future, I’d never feel such pure joy as I did then. He was right. It’s almost as if we get too “greedy” later on. I think I’ll be the happiest when I get back to my regular routine. And hopefully in a couple of months it will sink in that yes, I had my first book published and it turned out okay (mistakes and all), and now I’m working again, working on something that hopefully will be stronger and better.
KBC: The immigrants in The Last Chicken in America seem rather isolated and lonely. Do you think this is a result of their Russian culture? Or is it just the plight of immigrants coming to an American society that has turned inward, obsessed with television and computers? Or are these just the characters that interest you?
EL: I think that what happens – or at least what happened in my case – is, the world shrinks a little. The people in the book immigrate (often from big cities), and their choices, by necessity, are suddenly confined to this relatively small immigrant community. Some fit in, others don’t. Some find it comforting, others suffocating. For me it felt very lonely, and I spent a long time wanting desperately to break into the larger world and not knowing how. So I guess, my characters inherited that sense of isolation.
KBC: Many of the stories involve Masha, a college-age girl, new to the United States? How much does she share with your own background? Was coming from Moscow in the 1990s as difficult as it seems in the stories?
EL: I was a few years older than Masha when we came to the US in 1992. I had finished two years of college by then – in computers, naturally – and later transferred to the University of Pittsburgh, and then spent 6+ years working in IT, before turning to writing. So there are definitely some similarities. But yeah, the first few years were pretty hard, especially for my parents. They’d left so much behind, and now they had to start over somehow, and they were just learning English at the time. Plus they had me and my younger sister to worry about. Plus my grandmother, who was very sick. There was so much uncertainty. We were all struggling in our own ways, and we didn’t always know how to help one another.
KBC: I was most touched by the plight of Liberman in the story "What Do You Dream of, Cruiser Aurora?" The complexity of immigrating as an older person and trying to connect to something is beautifully rendered in this story. Can you talk about the inspiration for it?
EL: I was thinking of my grandfather. He came to the US with us, so his situation was different. But I was imagining someone with his kind of spirit. He used to be this wonderful gregarious man, a Navy captain in retirement, a prankster… Getting old is difficult regardless of the country, and immigration, of course, throws an extra twist into it. In the story, Liberman’s daughter tells him that elderly people come to America and “bloom.” And for some it’s true: they adjust, learn some English, find their place in the immigrant community. But for others, like Liberman, it’s the opposite. They break down. My grandfather passed away last year. He’d never found that new life for himself. He had us, but we were always busy or too far way. And he just got smaller and sadder each year.
KBC: In the Russian Club you bring up the irony of an actual Russian being in the Russian club. It's a hilarious story about a naive group of Americans who want to travel to Moscow and bring money for medical supplies. Masha tells them "They'll take your money. They'll tell you thank you very much, and then they'll turn around and buy some office furniture or maybe build a summer cottage for their child." Can you comment of this story and perhaps on having to disillusion idealistic Americans about Russia?
EL: Moscow was a grim place when we left it. (It has changed a lot since then, and from what I know, is actually quite glamorous and expensive these days – though I haven’t been back.) I think it was hard not be disillusioned about it. The democratic leaders we at first believed in turned out to be as corrupt as their communist predecessors. Corruption was pretty much everywhere. But for Masha the issue isn’t really the fate of Russia, but the question of belonging. Initially, the Russian Club for her is a way to become more like Americans, to join them. But instead, it makes her feel more Russian, while at the same time reminding her that as a Jew she never fully belonged in Russia in the first place.
KBC: The stories take place in a fairly desolate and almost soulless Pittsburgh. It's a town that has changed drastically over the past 20 years. It's also a place where there is a pocket of readers for Kashsbookcorner. I dug up a quote from Andy Summers from the Police about the city. "This city gets a dreadful rap... I find it romantic - a city of dreams - emerging from dark umber-stained hills above a river filled with mud and slag." Is there some truth to what he says in your opinion? Or do you think he's just nuts and high from playing a show with the Police?
EL: I actually never thought of Pittsburgh as desolate and soulless. (Though having moved there from Moscow, I did resent its smallness.) I hadn’t seen it during its dark and polluted years. I hadn’t seen its struggle. To me, it always looked clean and neat. Plus it had the rivers, the bridges, and the view from Mount Washington. It wasn’t a bad city, it’s just that I felt trapped in it. I think I first sensed that romantic vibe Andy Summers is talking about when I was reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. He captured it really well.
KBC: The collection is billed as a "novel in stories"? Many of the stories involve Masha, but many don't. How did that label come about? Do you think of it as a novel?
EL: To be honest, the label was a marketing decision. Which is to say, I didn’t decide it. My publisher did. (Is it even okay to admit this?) I was writing the book as a collection of linked stories. I always knew that the stories would be set in the same neighborhood and that there would be some recurring characters. I didn’t know that there would be this thread about Masha. I don’t mind the label though. The book is what it is. It’s made of stories.
KBC: You do a magnificent job in quickly creating memorable characters. Do you have any words of advice to writers? What short story writers do you recommend that people read?
EL: Thank you. For me, one way to discover who the characters are is to put them on the page and let them talk – in other words, write a scene with them, try to get a sense what their voice is like. Other times, I start with an image, especially if it’s the kind of character whose appearance/presence makes an impression on others. As for the recommendations, there are so many! George Saunders, of course. I’ve learned so much from him and his stories, the way he develops his characters and makes them so complex and fallible and good. Mary Gaitskill. She is amazing at describing characters, letting their physical attributes reflect their internal disorder. Seriously, I could make a huge list of writers whose stories influenced and taught me. Denis Johnson, Barry Hannah, Stuart Dybek, Kelly Link… I could go on and on.
KBC: What's next for you? When can we look forward to another brilliant book?
EL: A novel. This time, not in stories. (Though I do plan to keep writing stories.) As for when, let’s hope soon.
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