Immigrant song
Masha has been thrown out of the social order, by nothing more sinister than the goodwill of the affluent Jewish community of Pittsburgh. At 18, she emigrated from Moscow with her parents; they settled in Squirrel Hill, a neighborhood much like the Fairfax district. But her tightknit family is slow to adjust; it finds no comfort in the charity of the local synagogue. Whatâs more, Masha has outgrown tightknit -- well, mostly. Nothing fits where it should. Mashaâs stories, as she strives to find her place, tie together âThe Last Chicken in America,â the debut collection by Ellen Litman.
Five of the 13 stories, including the first and last, are told from Mashaâs point of view. She begins, enrolled in advanced ESL, doing her best to be a good daughter:
âMy parents are irrational, impossible to be around. There seems to be an angry electric current running through their blood. I understand. I try to be understanding. Itâs because of the jobs, there are no jobs in Pittsburgh. Theyâve been to the rĂ©sumĂ©-writing workshops and to the interview-going workshops. . . . But nobody wants a former teacher and an engineer with minimal English skills.
âThey take it out on me and on each other. We donât look much like a family anymore. But we have to stick together -- there are still appointments, phone calls, and Giant Eagle.â
Itâs at Giant Eagle -- the local grocery store -- that Mashaâs mother meets Alick, a Russian exchange student. At first heâs a friend to her parents; Masha considers him ugly and dull. But then she finds herself drawn to him. Together, they create a not-quite-Muscovite, not-quite-American safe zone for two.
Interspersed within Mashaâs tale are stories of other Russian immigrants in her neighborhood. With the breadth of characters -- an elderly widower, an Americanized divorcĂ©e, a trio of grown men, a young man restless for romantic liaisons -- Litman creates a portrait of an intimate community. The characters recur in fleeting cameos, popping in -- as a sharp-tongued aunt does, envying the popular twins from Donetsk. Few are satisfied in their hermetic world -- teenage Annie, for example, derisively calls her slacker cohorts âthe Russiansâ -- but itâs a world they seem more comfortable in than Masha does.
As central as Russian-ness is to the book, it is hardly a linguistic presence. There are many Russian names, but no Cyrillic text or transliterations. Instead, when Mashaâs parents argue -- exchanges that would clearly be in Russian -- they do so, for us, in English. Itâs a choice that places the reader inside the immigrantsâ world, granting an intimacy, a kind of bilingualness.
Yet the language of the book catches the ear, with quirky turns of phrase that imply idioms from Russia, or that morphed after immigration. âTwo boots make a pairâ explains why a son is like a father; back in Moscow, Masha calls a geek a âbotanist.â Young Masha imagines herself a âsheltered houseplant,â a gothic building has âlancet windows,â and when things get bad, âthe lights are low and yellow and grainy, like in a fever or a cheap movie.â
This last is from âAmong the Lilacs and the Girls,â which is told from Mashaâs fatherâs point of view while his wife slides into a dangerous depression. This particular story could probably stand alone, but here, providing a rare outsiderâs perspective on Masha, it has additional power. That may well be the challenge of tying a story collection together with one characterâs narrative: That character canât help but become the central, unifying force, so how can the stand-alone stories have equal weight?
In âThe Last Chicken in America,â some of them do. âWhat Do You Dream of, Cruiser âAuroraâ?â features the widower Liberman, who is cranky, difficult and affecting. âDancersâ -- in which an obedient young wife is stirred by a louche visitor -- was published in Tin House. And teenage Annieâs tale, âWhen the Neighbors Love You,â grabs hold of the reader with its odd second-person voice (âYou pick up your backpack, but he catches your handâ).
Nevertheless, itâs Mashaâs âdelirious noble dreamâ of finding her way in her new world that gives the book its structure. In the first story, sheâs convinced that â[i]mmigration distorts peopleâ; subsequently, she pushes against those distortions even as she is molded by them. As much as this is a book about an immigrant experience, though, it is also a book about this specific community. Mashaâs neighbors, fleshed out in their own stories, become a landscape of individuals. The marginal Donetsk twins are a landmark, more of a reference point than the Giant Eagle. Everyone knows Liberman and that it takes him forever to get across the street.
The small community of Squirrel Hill comes alive through its immigrants, and eventually it is a place that Mashaâs heart fully inhabits. The final story is called âHome.â
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