A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir
By Lev Golinkin
Why we recommend it:
During the 1980s and 90s thousands of Jews left the Soviet Union to start new lives in the United States, leaving behind anti-semitism and poverty. In this memoir, Lev Golinkin describes his journey to make sense of this past. The memoir poignantly captures the extreme challenge of leaving everything you have ever known, arriving in a foreign country where your education and experience are neither recognized nor respected and what that does to your dignity. It captures the complicated feelings of gratitude towards generous strangers for survival while resenting the lack of independence.
