Every time I glance at the overhead television screen that shows the position of my Aeroflot flight, this future is getting closer. I am twelve kilometers up in the air-forty thousand feet, according to the new, nonmetric system I have yet to learn. I wish I could clear my mind and focus on my imminent American future. “Gorokhova writes about her life with a novelist’s gift,” says The New York Times, and her second memoir is filled with empathy, insight, and humor. As Elena strives to bridge the gap between the cultures of her past and present and find her place in a new world, she comes to love the fierce resilience of her Soviet mother when she recognizes it in her American daughter. Russian Tattoo is the story of a unique balancing act and a family struggle: three generations of strong women with very different cultural values, all living under the same roof and battling for control. Before the birth of Elena’s daughter, her mother comes to help care for the baby and stays for twenty-four years, ordering everyone to eat soup and wear a hat, just as she did in Leningrad. Finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writingįrom the bestselling author of A Mountain of Crumbs, a “brilliant and illuminating” ( BookPage) portrait of mothers and daughters that reaches from Cold War Russia to modern-day New Jersey to show how the ties that hold you back can also teach you how to start over.Įlena Gorokhova moves to the US in her twenties to join her American husband and to break away from her mother, a mirror image of her Soviet Motherland: overbearing, protective, and difficult to leave.

Russian Tattoo by Elena Gorokhova