East Of The West

[diva_samodiva]

I just finished reading a book called East Of The West - so here's my review on it! First, the plot, then some pros and cons, and finally a couple of quotes.

Plot & The Author:
The book is a collection of short stories which take place in Bulgaria and the USA. They're all written by Miroslav Penkov, a Bulgarian author born during socialism immigrated to the USA in the 90s to study psychology. The setting for them is either socialist Bulgaria or 90s post-socialist Bulgaria, with occasional glimpses of the Balkan wars, WW1 & WW2 and, of course, the times of the Ottoman rule.


Positives:
1) Historical Accuracy
Each and every one of the stories was a lived experience of people from the region. I think this is the first book written by a Bulgarian in a long, long time, where I've actually managed to find pieces of my life in the writing - there was no story I couldn't in a way relate to. It's partly this feeling of being seen and heard that got me to read on.

The author also doesn't shine from the harsh historical truths - even ones that paint Bulgaria in a bad light. More on that later.

2) Bulgarian Identity
So many of the stories explore the Bulgarian identity in all its forms and shapes. One such example are Bulgarians forced to live outside of Bulgaria because another country had claimed those territories in war. They can't return - the borders are closed to them. Even nowadays the country does little to defend them, or try to sort out their documents.

In some of the stories, the author is once again the immigrant in America, who, having built a life outside his homecountry, now struggles to preserve the roots. How do you teach your child your native language? How do you keep a piece of your ethnic identity safe in the generation you're bringing up, when they'll never come in contact with the country it comes from? And if you choose not to, how do you live with that decision?

There are, of course, the Bulgarians who choose to leave behind their past. Some, like the character of Buddy, become doctors in the States, abandon their heritage and ban Bulgarian at home. For all of the author's anger, the reader can hardly find it within themselves to blame those characters. Bulgarian now means little more than poor "commie" cab driver - everything you wouldn't want your child to be.

There are characters like Missis, too. She's a Bulgarian woman who'd married rich to Mister, and had started speaking only English. They still live in Bulgaria, though. Going to expensive restaurants, travelling, wearing high fashion clothes - all of that during the financial crisis of the 90s, too. It's easy to see why they feel different from the rest. In their own home, of all the things they could choose to become, foreigners is what they set for.

3) The Motherland Isn't Always Great
Not all of the stories focus on the life of immigrants longing to kiss their land. Bulgaria is also the country who let them starve to the point of seeking immigration. As the characters face war, abuse, abandonment, mistreatment in mental institutions, Bulgaria the entity sits behind and does nothing. On more than one occasion the author's anger peaked up, coursing through the pages. I think that's a question almost every Eastern European has asked themselves at least once - has God truly abandoned this place?

It isn't only a question for the Bulgarians in Bulgaria, though, but for the Turks as well. I was beyond impressed with the story "The Night Horizon". It's about Kemal, a girl, one of many Turkish people in Bulgaria forced to switch their Turkish names to Bulgarian ones during socialism. Listed under the name of Vyara, though, Kemal still got no help from the Party, as she watched her family be destroyed by sickness and poverty. All the Party did was take and take from its "forgotten" citizens, until there was nothing left. This level of institutional discrimination is something that keeps being swept under the rug in Bulgaria nowadays. It showed another face to the so-called Bulgarian identity - with all the nationalism, prejudice and forced assimilation this term can and does often entail.

4) Languages
In Miroslav Penkov's stories learning foreign languages is no longer the sign of the aristocrat, but that of the survivor. A great importance is placed on learning English. Had it not been for his English, the teacher from Bulgaria wouldn't have made such a fine cab driver in the West! Learning English is what the boy in one of the stories does to escape Bulgaria and go to the USA. Only to then discover that being able to speak the same language as the natives hardly means they'd want to speak to you. So as Missis beats her impoverished 15 year-old-neighbor for stealing and not dilligently writing down her English words, the message runs clear:

"This is how you learn your English. This is how you marry Mister and live rich."

I'd be lying if I said it's not a message a lot of girls here have grown up with. 

5) Disappointment
Disappointment in Bulgaria, disappointment in the country you'll be immigrating to, in your neighbours, in yourself, in the whole world. The setting of all the stories is the middle of an unveiling historical event, yet the characters themselves are tossed aside, not knowing what to believe in. And so, years into capitalism, the elderly generations of a village in Northern Bulgaria find themselves collecting all remnants of communism, trying to build Leningrad again. Stuck between the inapplicable ideals of the past and the uncertanties of the present, the characters are all struggling to fit their hopes for the future on the map of their own Bulgaria.

6) How well the author embodies the characters he's playing
I cannot stress this enough! In one story he'll be a man in his seventies, stuck with his disabled wife in an elderly home, reading his wife's late lover's messages from the war, while watching his daughter's marriage fall apart. Then in the next he's a fifteen-year-old girl, abandoned by her parents (mother in prison, father in the UK), stealing money to help her twin sister living in a mental institution to get an abortion. Miroslav Penkov lives the lives of his characters even after they've breathed their last breath.

Negatives:
1) Racism
Dear Lord, so much racism! In one story the character had married a Japanese woman and the parents were just glad she wasn't black! Don't get me started on the way Mexicans were portrayed in one story... And the sheer amount of prejudice towards the Romani community!!!!

I think this is not so much the author being racist as it is him depicting racism in the Balkan peninsula, though. Bulgaria as a whole is an incredibly racist country. I'm not excusing racism or saying "oh, it's just a normal thing, so please ignore it". It's everywhere here, though, so if you want to write a story that shows the harsh aspects of life in the country you cannot avoid it.

2) Slurs
Some racist and homophobic slurs in there.

3) Nationalism
Once again, typical Balkan nationalism. Bulgaria on three seas crap in one story. In the context they were written tho they made sense. A soldier who has fought in the Balkan wars and ww1 would most likely dream of territorial expansion. A person raised by the generation who still remembers Ottoman rule would be telling you the tales of when their grandma defeated a Turkish janissary. Even nowadays, this is actual talk you can hear.

4) Lots of Bulgarian words in the English edition
Yeah, yeah, I know, the irony of me complaining about that. Look, I have no issue with Bulgarian words in general. They made a story far more real to me, and added another layer of nuance. Most English speakers, however, have no way of knowing what those mean, which could get frustrating. In later stories the author adds a translation to the words, I think he recognised that he should make his works as accessible as possible to his main group of readers - people who can speak English.

It could quite as well be an issue with the file I have, but I think a lot of those words should have been explained in the back of the book.

-

Honestly, knowing that the author is writing stories that are meant to show Bulgaria in its many faces I don't know I can call all of these negatives. They are negatives in the sense that they're real social problems in Bulgaria that need tackling. Not so much negatives in a literary sense here, since they contribute to the historical (& political) accuracy of life in the country.

Now onto my favourite part:

Quotes:

"His eyes are black, shiny with fever, and his lips glisten with the fat from the rooster soup the peasants have fed him. But no soup can help. He is kissing death in the mouth."

"I'm old, I think to myself, I'm ancient. When I speak, the young ones listen. But what do you say to a man whose love for a woman is stronger than the love for his own son, for his own blood? Nothing will make this man regret."

"Mihalaky came in smoke and roar. And with him came the West. My cousin Vera stepped out of the boat and everything on her screamed, We live better than you, we have more stuff, stuff you can't have and never will. She wore white leather shoes with little flowers on them, which she explained was called an Adidas. She had jeans. And her shirt said things in English."

"But I knew. That longing in my sister's eyes, that disappointment, I'd seen them in Vera's eyes before, on the day she had wished to be Bulgarian. It was the same look of defeat, scary and contagious, and because of that look, I kept my distance."

"I could see the grave that they (people of the same village that had been split between Bulgaria and Serbia) had dug, and the earth was the same, and the depth was the same."

"The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind goes toward the West, toward Serbia, and all the rivers run away, East of the West. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. Nothing is new under the sun."

"It was not the teasing but rather the sight of me hunched over an abridged edition of the Oxford English Dictionary that finally drove Grandpa back to his native language."

""America," Grandpa said when I told him. I could see the word dislodge itself from his acid stomach, stick in his throat and be expelled at lasst onto the courtyard tiles. He watched me and pulled on his mustache."

"My ears rang, my tongue swelled up. I went on for months, until one day I understoof that nothing I said mathered to those around me. No one knew where I was from, or cared to know. I had nothing to say to this world."

"She spoke her old name - Kemal - and the more she repeated it, the more it flowed in itself, the deeper it bit itss own tail. She repeated her new name, Vyara, and kept repeating - the old name, the new name, until one devoured the other. Until both felt foreign.
Her body was not her body. Her name was not hers."
And so, so much more!.

Comments

[amado1]

Oh, those are excellent quotes. Now I'm side-eyeing this book too 👀