A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir, by Lev Golinkin
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A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir, by Lev Golinkin
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A compelling story of two intertwined journeys: a Jewish refugee family fleeing persecution and a young man seeking to reclaim a shattered past. In the twilight of the Cold War (the late 1980s), nine-year old Lev Golinkin and his family cross the Soviet border with only ten suitcases, $600, and the vague promise of help awaiting in Vienna. Years later, Lev, now an American adult, sets out to retrace his family's long trek, locate the strangers who fought for his freedom, and in the process, gain a future by understanding his past.Lev Golinkin's memoir is the vivid, darkly comic, and poignant story of a young boy in the confusing and often chilling final decade of the Soviet Union. It's also the story of Lev Golinkin, the American man who finally confronts his buried past by returning to Austria and Eastern Europe to track down the strangers who made his escape possible . . . and say thank you. Written with biting, acerbic wit and emotional honesty in the vein of Gary Shteyngart, Jonathan Safran Foer, and David Bezmozgis, Golinkin's search for personal identity set against the relentless currents of history is more than a memoir—it's a portrait of a lost era. This is a thrilling tale of escape and survival, a deeply personal look at the life of a Jewish child caught in the last gasp of the Soviet Union, and a provocative investigation into the power of hatred and the search for belonging. Lev Golinkin achieves an amazing feat—and it marks the debut of a fiercely intelligent, defiant, and unforgettable new voice.
A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir, by Lev Golinkin - Amazon Sales Rank: #62749 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-13
- Released on: 2015-10-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .71" w x 5.15" l, .54 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir, by Lev Golinkin Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November 2014: Lev Golinkin’s memoir, A Backpack, A Bear, Eight Crates of Vodka, begins with a trip back in time, when he experienced harsh prejudice as a young Jewish boy in the Ukraine, and leading into chaotic final years of the Soviet Union when his family made their escape and rebuilt their lives with the help of American Jewish aid workers. Fast forward to Lev Golinkin all grown up and now an American citizen searching for identity in the footsteps of his past. A perceptive, unflinching, and unexpectedly funny look at a life sculpted by history and how one man found self-acceptance in the roots of his self-hatred. –Seira Wilson
Review "[A] hilarious and heartbreaking story of a Jewish family’s escape from oppression....whose drama, hope and heartache Mr. Golinkin captures brilliantly."--The New York Times"An awesome intercontinental whirlwind, funny and smart. Go Ukraine!"--Gary Shteyngart, bestselling author of Little Failure "Golinkin's memoir is a look into life during the Cold War, as well as a coming-of-age-story about finding yourself and where you belong. And reading the harrowing details of his family's exodus will have you counting your own blessings—and hugging the people you love."--Glamour.com "Mr. Golinkin excels at these moments, describing the emotional truth of immigration... His account is so raw that it manages to capture at a visceral level the feelings of many of the million Soviet Jews who left their homeland at the Cold War’s end."--The Wall Street Journal"[Lev Golinkin] convincingly relates the purgatory of statelessness, the confused anticipatory state of the immigrant."--The Chicago Tribune"Best memoir title of the year...Golinkin's A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka is fueled not by sly humor but by a potent cocktail of earnestness and anger."--The Oregonian"Outstanding, original, and deeply moving."--Chuck Hogan, bestselling author of The Town and co-author of The Strain"As the author turned nine during the Soviet Union’s final years, his Jewish family fled hostile Kharkov, in Ukraine, with virtually no possessions and made their way through central Europe to the U.S. After college, he retracted their steps, thanking the NGO workers and patrons who’d helped them – including the son of an unrepentant Nazi Austrian baron. Golinkin’s account of the whole saga is lucidly intelligent and humanistic – and deeply moving."--ELLE (The Elle's Lettres 2015 Readers' Prize)"A vibrant, stylish work of literary nonfiction that's equally joyous and tragic."--The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philly.com)"Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, there is a vibrant literary canon written by former Soviet Jews who have come of age in America. Gary Shteyngart may be the group’s founding father; Anya Ulinich, its graphic novelist; Yelena Akhtiorskaya, its newest ingenue. Mr. Golinkin, with this deeply personal and sometimes painful dissection of the split identity of an emigre, has grabbed the role of psychotherapist."--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Despite the serious topic, Golinkin writes with a light touch; he has a natural sense of humor and an easy style...[A Backpack, a Bear, and] Eight Crates of Vodka opens with a depiction of breathtaking cruelty. But by the end, readers may feel breathless at the incredible kindness of strangers."--Minneapolis Star Tribune“There’s a gem on every page of A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka. Lev Golinkin has the skill and vision necessary to tell the story of a crumbling empire, and the soulfulness and flair to capture that story in the saga of one man. He’s an alert, and witty, and humane storyteller. I will eagerly read anything he writes.”--Avi Steinberg, author of Running the Books and The Lost Book of Mormon"Golinkin came to America as a Ukrainian child refugee with only what he and his family could carry. But he's found his family fortune in their exodus story--a soulful tale that is both incredibly beautiful and wickedly funny, a tale of being lost, being found and finding home." --Helene Stapinski, author of Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History "An unforgettable coming-of-age memoir of a boy from Soviet Ukraine that entertains as it conveys insight into the meaning of America in today's turbulent world." --Jack F. Matlock, Jr., former ambassador to the Soviet Union under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and author of Reagan and Gorbachev and Autopsy on an Empire"In Lev Golinkin’s skillful memoir, A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, we share his family’s traumatic flight to freedom from Soviet Ukraine, and then a young man’s brave attempt to build a meaningful life in the United States."--Peter Eisner, author of The Pope’s Last Crusade"[Lev] Golinkin's personal tale of childhood in the Ukraine has the specificity of his own story at its heart, and becomes more than just a woeful yarn about repression in the Soviet Bloc. It can be heartbreaking, but in unexpected and nuanced ways...When he catches up with the present, the narrative fractures, skipping between his return voyage to the Ukraine to answer his own questions about leaving and accounts of his family's early experiences in their new country. All these strains are working at once in the story, as they are in his mind, as he digs up repressed memories and reassembles fragmented ones. Golinkin's memoir travels along at a confident clip, giving readers not just an immigrant story, but also a detailed look at how the mind wraps itself around a complicated life."--Biographile.com"Golinkin writes with dry humor about his experience but connects emotionally...A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka blends memoir and history into an intimate tale of personal growth."--BookPage“Golinkin convincingly portrays the miseries, and rare joys, of his bullied, furtive childhood, and the limits it put on him….[He] has created a deeply moving account of fear and hope.”--Publishers Weekly"An ex-Iron Curtain refugee-turned-American citizen tells the emotional story of how he and his parents fled the Ukraine two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union...Unflinching honesty. A mordantly affecting chronicle of a journey to discover that 'you can't have a future if you don't have a past.'"--Kirkus Reviews"Golinkin’s early memories are touchingly true to those of a youngster, and he reports on his family members’ fears, troubles, persistence, and patience with a keen eye and a memorable voice...Eye-opening for those who come to the U.S. and for those who help them do so."--BooklistFrom the Hardcover edition.
About the Author Lev Golinkin is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka. Mr. Golinkin, a graduate of Boston College, came to the US as a child refugee from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov (now called Kharkiv) in 1990. His op-eds and essays on the Ukraine crisis have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and Time.com, among others; he has been interviewed by WSJ Live and HuffPost Live.From the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful. A wonderful memoir, a thank you in book form for all those who helped the author's family come to the US By Suzanne Amara Within this wonderfully written memoir, there is one story that stands out most for me. A young Lev Golinkin, in Vienna, waiting to go to America, is taken to a house full of donated clothes and is allowed to pick out a winter coat for himself. He finds a bomber type jacket, with lots of zippers, to replace a fur coat that was destroyed during a terrible night at the border crossing out of the USSR. Many years later, he still remembers the moment of getting that jacket, and he seeks out the people and the organization that made that possible.This memoir is full of moments like that. I think it should be required reading for all those thinking about immigration to America. Golinkin was born in the USSR, a place where just being Jewish led to beatings, lack of school opportunities and constant fear. Although his family knows almost nothing about their Jewish heritage, and guess at when Passover is to sneak some unleavened flour into their apartment, that doesn't matter, as a passage so strongly explains. Being Jewish is an ethnicity, not a belief. Golinkin, a young boy when the family left the USSR, already realized what was at stake. His vivid memories of the people and places that led them to their life in America are amazing to read about---heartbreaking and hopeful both.I hope this book gets wide readership. It deserves that.
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful. I Can't Recommend It Enough By Inna Tysoe This is an amazingly good book. And, for me, an amazingly hard book to read. The Golinkins came to the US after us (they came in the after ours--the Soviet Union closed the border when they went to war in Afghanistan) and they came from Kharkov in Ukraine whereas we are from Moscow, Russia but we all lived under the same regime. And we were all Jews.I was a girl growing up so maybe I didn’t get beaten up for being Jewish in the same humiliating way because of that accident of gender and because we lived in Moscow we didn’t have to go so far to reach customs and we didn’t meet a benefactor in Vienna (we were processed in Rome)…but the rest… I know the rest because I lived it. And so this was hard to read.It was like holding up a mirror to my life. Not a perfect mirror but definitely a reflection. I probably needed to see it. But it was hard.The book though is excellent. From the minute he mentions the parades “Parades were the gold standard of the Soviet Union” he had me. I simply could not put this book down. I have work to do and a husband and puppies but I was lost in the chaos of immigrating while a refugee, of babushkas (never cross a babushka is sound advice, trust me) of bribery-by-vodka, of the fear upon which the Soviet regime is built; upon which it still rests. And of the awful things that does to a human being.I was lost too in realizing just how many people had come together to make our escape from the Soviet Regime possible. The American Jewish Distribution Committee (Joint) that paid for us as we stayed in Vienna and Rome, the Hebrew International Aid Society (HIAS) that organized our exodus and provided the legions of volunteers, social workers, sponsors, and legal staff to ensure that we were able to go where we wanted to go and the many, many people in the United States, in Israel and the whole world who worked in all manner of ways—from signing a petition to showing up at a rally, to donating a sweater, a jacket, or sponsoring a family—the hundreds and thousands of people who for decades worked and worked and worked to ensure that my family and I could get out. So that we could have a life.Unlike Lev Golinkin, I will never even try to thank those myriads of people. I am too settled in my life now; I am no longer a freshly-minted college graduate looking for an identity. But upon finishing this book, I made a small donation to HIAS. It was the least I could do.I highly recommend this book.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful. Told with warmth and spirit By Phil 413 One of the things I really liked about "A Backpack, a Bear and Eight Crates of Vodka" is its balance. It's not just about the bad times or experiences. It's also about the funny, victorious, hopeful and compassionate moments. I was completely taken in by the relationship between Lev and his older sister, Lina - the clever way the two teased one another and "got even" for tricks played was full of humor and good cheer. On the other hand, I was just as riveted by Lev's family's terrifying ordeal at the border when they were trying to exit the USSR (vicious people were in control of whether his family would be locked up instead of permitted to leave the country).The people Lev and his family meet are just as compelling as Lev and his family. The reader meets various people from charitable organizations who are committed and make a huge difference in the lives of these Jewish refugees. The way Lev introduces them and tells their stories (with warmth and affection) sparks the reader to feel deeply and appreciate these people as if we knew them ourselves. From Binder, who gladly opens up his hotel to help house and feed the refugees on their journey, to Eva, who gives away free clothing - there's a clear, unhurried picture of each person or group of people who helped along the way and their stories/kindnesses.There is the big picture in this memoir, but also little details (Lev learning the alphabet; Lina getting a job; Lev's dad working for free just to get a good recommendation to take to the U.S. with them) and everyday life that brings Lev, his family, people who threaten and cause problems as well as those who care and help, to vivid life. You can't help but read on; the story pulls you in and you find you'd rather stay in it than put the book down to do other things you must do (like work).
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A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir, by Lev Golinkin
