© Tatiana Shymanova, 2016

© Esfera, illustrations, 2016

ISBN 978-5-4474-3844-9

Created with intellectual publishing system Ridero

In the West, today, the popular imagination has bent Eastern Europe into a barbarous, backwards swath of contested land forever haunted by the histories of the Soviet Bloc. But these geographies hold homes, hold loves, hold lives; no matter the pain or torments, countries like Ukraine and Siberia were and are the scenes of childhood— replete with all the joys and grief of existence itself. Tatyana Shimanova’s autobiographical novel, My 20+ Years In America, paints this dynamic picture, placing her homeland front and center and subjecting it to both leveled criticism and beautiful nostalgia, creating a melancholic and moving narrative out of her own struggles and successes.

My 20+ Years In America trembles with arresting prose, thoughtful meditations, and a universality essential to any and all autobiographies. The specificities of time and place allow for lush detail and a poetic verisimilitude, but the essence of Ms. Shimanova’s story is as primal as any bildungsroman— from Goethe to Sedaris. My 20+ Years In America, however, with its pertinence to the current global stage, functions just as well as a contemporary allegory, as a humanizing symbol of the ontology of the late 20^th century, the intertwining narratives and circumstances of the marginalized that shaped our society today.

But, throughout it all, Ms. Shimanova stays true to herself, true to her own truth, if you will. Beyond the evocativeness of the writing and the nuance of the characters, the clear honesty of the hand penning these pages shines through, underpins every word, like confession, or salvation. This is the true task of the autobiographer— and Tatyana Shimanova has achieved this arduous task with flying colors.

Memoirs dealing with immigration and the prevailing belief that people can better their lives and the lives of their children are often sentimental and hold the sympathy of the reader with vivid, emotional descriptions of events. However, Tatyana Shimanova’s writing is spare, mirroring the physical coldness of her surroundings growing up in Siberia and the Ukraine as well as the cold shoulder she encounters when she finally reaches America.

My 20+ Years In America begins in present-day America with Tonya (a character based on the author) driving to work and remembering her sister and mother. The story flashes back and forth from past to present without purpose, making it difficult to follow at times. When the narrator digs into an event or a relationship, however, readers will be invested. Unfortunately, the challenge of maintaining that investment is not always met.

Tonya’s childhood and adolescence are explained quickly at the beginning of the book; by page twenty-seven, she is already leaving for college. Readers are given only a cursory view of the incredible pain and grief that have shaped Tonya’s young life. As Tonya ages and she navigates love, career, marriage, and motherhood in a climate of political and economic hardship, the book’s pace changes, and the quality of the narrative voice improves. Tonya struggles between her need for help and the pride that keeps her from asking for it. Even when her son is in the hospital, she struggles to ask a doctor for help. That pride may explain why the narrator has difficulty giving voice to so many of the emotions Tonya must be feeling. When Tonya decides to move to America with her youngest son, she risks forging a passport. In doing so, she creates a bureaucratic nightmare for herself. She travels for hours to appear in court, only to be told to return another day. She asks for asylum, but the changing laws don’t protect her. The hope that Tonya will find community, employment, and a home of her own propel the reader through a thick forest of new hardships that, frankly, don’t seem like an improvement over her life in the Ukraine. As she settles into her life as a caregiver, at the same time dodging red tape and worrying about her sons, there is one last story Tonya has to tell. This is probably the most heartfelt and well-written chapter in the book. Tonya has had a lifelong love affair with the piano, and when she becomes caregiver to the aging musician John Leiberman, the two forge a unique and beautiful friendship. Unfortunately, the sun doesn’t stay out long for Tonya. With so little power and position in her new country, it seems that she is fated to always be struggling against the wind. Shimlec clearly has a powerful story to tell, and the book’s cover makes the protagonist’s lonely struggle evident from the start. Readers would better connect emotionally with Tonya’s hardships had the author written at a more even pace and with a less disjointed chronology.

Tatyana Shymanova’s novel My 20+ Years In America, based on a true story, includes moving, sometimes joyous, sometimes harrowing stories of her childhood and coming of age in Siberia and Ukraine. Follow her dedication to studying and teaching piano, growing up and falling in love, her marriage and children, and her journey to the United States, in which a fateful decision changed her and her younger son’s lives forever. The author’s struggle for survival on two continents alternately inspires hope, admiration, and outrage.

The alarm was about to stop ringing when Tonya’s1 mind gradually returned from the fuzzy realm of her dreams back to reality. She had no idea how long the alarm had been on before she awoke, but now as she lay fully conscious, the unrelenting buzz jarred the stillness of the early morning, urging her to begin her day. She hadn’t slept well that night, tossing and turning in the sheets and blanket that now lay crumpled in a heap at the foot of the bed. Gazing out the window, she could just make out the streaks of orange and yellow that colored the sky before the sun finally broke through into morning. She slowly reached out to the clock, fumbled around for the snooze button and enjoyed a few more seconds of silence. It always took a fighting effort to get herself out of bed, but she knew that she could not trust her body to stay there a minute longer.

Arriving late to work was certainly never an option, no matter how much her body yearned for those extra minutes of rest. Tonya was used to this life by now: for the last 7 years she had worked as a private CNA in the Boston area, finding jobs by word of mouth. She had tried to fit her entire life perfectly into this unrelenting schedule for the majority of her existence. She finally pulled herself up into a seated position on the edge of the bed while her feet blindly stroked the floor, searching in the darkness for the slippers she was sure she had left there the night before. The wooden floor felt cold to her feet, and she was relieved when she found the first shoe, then the second, and felt the warmth envelop her. She stood slowly, still in the haze of sleep, and made her way to the bathroom. It was already 5:00 a.m. when Tonya turned on the shower and felt the cool drops of water fall onto her face, awakening herself in preparation for the upcoming day. She thought ahead to the fast-approaching drive to work.