美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Soviet Daughter': How A Great-Grandmother's Diary Became A Graphic Novel

 

LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: 

A secret diary, a hidden history. Julia Alekseyeva discovered her great-grandmother Lola's memoir¹, and she turned it into her debut² graphic³ novel. It's called "Soviet⁴ Daughter." It tells the story of Lola, a barely educated Ukrainian woman who lived through the creation of the Soviet Union and its eventual⁵ collapse⁶. Julia Alekseyeva, thanks so much for being with us.

JULIA ALEKSEYEVA: Thank you so much for having me on the show.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So tell me first how you discovered your great-grandmother's writing.

ALEKSEYEVA: So my family emigrated from what had just become Ukraine in 1992, and she slowly started writing certain things in a notebook and sort of keeping them hidden from everyone. And then after she died, it was discovered. And she had actually written a little note in the beginning, do not read this until my death. And so...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wow.

ALEKSEYEVA: ...My grandmother and I read it. And I just thought it was completely extraordinary because it had so many details from the Revolution through the Civil War and then World War II and then the thaw⁷ - all of that was completely there and in writing.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So when you opened this book, this sort of history, what was written there? What surprised you? Were there things that you didn't know?

ALEKSEYEVA: There were. She put as many details in there as she could remember. I think it was also a way for her to stay lucid⁸ in the last 10 years of her life because she lived to be 100. And she put in all of these details, many of which were kind of unnecessary in the context of the book, like which cousin married which other person that they knew, how they got together. You know, all of that was cute, but...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: All the minutia⁹ of a family. Exactly.

ALEKSEYEVA: Exactly - and that this person liked apples. And I was like, all right, fine. But there were a lot of sort of surprising details. Something that was, I think, kept from me as I was growing up was the extent to which she was kind of a wild child, you know? And, you know, would go out on dates and have all these affairs and then just drop them, be like, oh, not interested anymore, sorry. Which was not something that was praised in - (laughter) in my family. And so - but...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And probably not very well known. It's not very often that one's great-grandmother will sit and discuss the affairs of their youth. Did that make you feel this connection? All of a sudden she became a much more real person. Her story became much fuller, more nuanced.

ALEKSEYEVA: Absolutely. It did. Although I have to say that she - weirdly¹⁰ enough, we did have that strong bond in person. So I was left alone with her a lot as a young child. When we first emigrated to the United States, my mother was trying to find work and my grandparents were trying to help out in other ways, so I was pretty much left with Lola for the bulk of my early childhood. And we just bonded¹¹.

And something I talk about in the story is that when I was 20, I had this janitorial¹² gig when I would go to her apartment and sort of clean it, and then she would give me tea and we would chat for a couple of hours. And she would tell me all of these stories, but I didn't write them down. I just sort of took them in. And at that point, as a 20-year-old, I was going through breakups. I thought everything was the most dramatic thing in the entire world. So it gave me an interesting perspective.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You came here together with your great-grandmother. You moved from Kiev to Chicago right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why did your family come here?

ALEKSEYEVA: So something that I had always assumed and what was on the official paperwork was that we were refugees due to being Jewish and due to anti-Semitism. The real reason that I think many people emigrated and - but this was made clear to me two, three years ago - was that it was actually due to Chernobyl. Everyone sort of thought, we have to leave here. We don't know what this cloud is hanging over Kiev in 1986. And I was born two years later, and there was a sense in which they didn't know what would happen to all of these kids that were born around this time. And so a lot of families, even though there was anti-Semitism, chose to leave for other reasons. And Chernobyl was that moment where a lot of people decided¹³, we have to go.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Were you sick?

ALEKSEYEVA: I was not sick as a child, but I found out that I had thyroid cancer as a senior in college. And got treated and it's fine now, but I think this happens to a lot of people that were emigrating from the USSR at that moment, especially young children.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why did you choose to make it into a graphic novel and not a more sort of conventional novel?

ALEKSEYEVA: So my great-grandmother was a very, very bright person, but she was not educated in the classical sense of the term. She stopped going to school in fourth grade in order to take care of her siblings¹⁴ and to sort of run her household in a crazy way, so she didn't have the kind of diction that one would expect from a writer. There were a lot of run-on sentences, some words that were a little too casual. And so she wasn't...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Educated.

ALEKSEYEVA: Well, she was - she was self-educated.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right.

ALEKSEYEVA: So it's a very different kind of intelligence. And if I had just translated directly from Russian to English, it would lose that kind of aura. And also, that way, people could actually visualize¹⁵ what was happening in this book because I think it's hard for a lot of people who didn't grow up with the same imagery to really understand what was going on in those regions - the uniforms, the parks, the idea of just Soviet living.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: In this work, you also talk about the sometimes difficult relationship with your own mother. How did your family react to having this story told?

ALEKSEYEVA: My family is not necessarily with it in terms of, like, literary activity. They're not big readers. At least my mother is not a big reader. So she didn't realize that this genre¹⁶ existed. So she just thought, oh, it's just some activity that she has going on. And so once I got a publishing deal it became very, very serious. And I don't think the majority of my family was very happy.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why?

ALEKSEYEVA: I think to them it's like airing dirty laundry. You know, like, why would people want to know these things? We're not so special. What are you going to say? That's not something that we want everyone to hear. I think they would never think of this story being useful for others. I, of course, disagree (laughter). But it varied¹⁷, and my closest family members were not very happy with what ended up happening with the book.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Has that been difficult for you?

ALEKSEYEVA: It has because I started the book to pay homage¹⁸ to a family member that I loved very deeply. And what ended up happening is that it kind of pulled a lot of my family apart. So unfortunately, I think these things kind of happen. I think once they realize that they're not getting phone calls saying, leave the United States now, we don't want you here, you know, kind of thing - I think it'll get a little better with time. But right now it's still a very stressful situation with my family.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Julia Alekseyeva's debut graphic novel is "Soviet Daughter." It came out this month from Microcosm Press. Thank you so much.

ALEKSEYEVA: Thank you so much. This was wonderful.

1 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

2 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

3 graphic   

adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的

参考例句：

• The book gave a graphic description of the war.这本书生动地描述了战争的情况。
• Distinguish important text items in lists with graphic icons.用图标来区分重要的文本项。

4 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。

5 eventual   

adj.最后的，结局的，最终的

参考例句：

• Several schools face eventual closure.几所学校面临最终关闭。
• Both parties expressed optimism about an eventual solution.双方对问题的最终解决都表示乐观。

6 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

7 thaw   

v.（使）融化，（使）变得友善；n.融化，缓和

参考例句：

• The snow is beginning to thaw.雪已开始融化。
• The spring thaw caused heavy flooding.春天解冻引起了洪水泛滥。

8 lucid   

adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的

参考例句：

• His explanation was lucid and to the point.他的解释扼要易懂。
• He wasn't very lucid,he didn't quite know where he was.他神志不是很清醒，不太知道自己在哪里。

9 minutia   

n.微枝末节，细节

参考例句：

• They are take great pains for the every minutia.他们为每个细节煞费苦心。
• Much of his early work is concerned with the minutiae of rural life.他早期的许多作品关注的是农村生活中一些鸡毛蒜皮的琐事。

10 weirdly   

古怪地

参考例句：

• Another special characteristic of Kweilin is its weirdly-shaped mountain grottoes. 桂林的另一特点是其形态怪异的岩洞。
• The country was weirdly transformed. 地势古怪地变了样。

11 bonded   

n.有担保的，保税的，粘合的

参考例句：

• The whisky was taken to bonded warehouses at Port Dundee.威士忌酒已送到邓迪港的保稅仓库。
• This adhesive must be applied to both surfaces which are to be bonded together.要粘接的两个面都必须涂上这种黏合剂。

12 janitorial   

adj.管理的(janitor的变形)

参考例句：

• Besides attending class, you will help our janitorial staff after school. 除了正常上课以外，下课后你得帮助学校的工人做做义工。 来自电影对白
• The accommodation will be cleaned 2-3 times every week by janitorial staff. 宿舍每星期更换2~3次备品，并有清洁人员清扫宿舍环境。 来自互联网

13 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

14 siblings   

n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A triplet sleeps amongst its two siblings. 一个三胞胎睡在其两个同胞之间。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She has no way of tracking the donor or her half-siblings down. 她没办法找到那个捐精者或她的兄弟姐妹。 来自时文部分

15 visualize   

vt.使看得见，使具体化，想象，设想

参考例句：

• I remember meeting the man before but I can't visualize him.我记得以前见过那个人，但他的样子我想不起来了。
• She couldn't visualize flying through space.她无法想像在太空中飞行的景象。

16 genre   

n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格

参考例句：

• My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
• Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看， 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。

17 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

18 homage   

n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬

参考例句：

• We pay homage to the genius of Shakespeare.我们对莎士比亚的天才表示敬仰。
• The soldiers swore to pay their homage to the Queen.士兵们宣誓效忠于女王陛下。