Failures of Domesticity in Contemporary Russian-American Literature: Vapnyar, Krasikov, Ulinich, and Reyn

Authors

  • Karen Ryan University of Virginia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21992/T9B91V

Abstract

Hybrid literature has flourished in the Russian diaspora in the last decade and much of it is semi-autobiographical, concerned with the reconfiguration of identity in emigration. It dwells productively on the translation of the self and (more broadly) on the relationship between center and margin in the post-Soviet, transnational world. Gender roles are subject to contestation, as writers interrogate and reconsider expectations inherited from traditional Russian culture. This article situates Russian hybrid literature vis-à-vis Western feminism, taking into account Russian women’s particular experience of feminism. Four female writers of contemporary Russian-American literature – Lara Vapnyar, Sana Krasikov, Anya Ulinich, and Irina Reyn – inscribe failures of domesticity into their prose. Their female characters who cannot or do not cook or clean problematize woman’s role as nurturer. Home (geographic or imaginary) carries a semantic load of limitation and restriction, so failure as a homemaker may be paradoxically liberating. For female characters working in the West to support their families in Russia, domesticity is sometimes even more darkly cast as servitude. Rejection of traditional Russian definitions of women’s gender roles may signal successful renogotiation of identity in the diaspora. Although these writers may express nostalgia for the Russian culture of their early childhood, their critique of the tyranny of home is a powerful narrative gesture. Failures of domesticity represent successful steps in the redefinition of the self and they support these writers’ claim to transnational status.

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Author Biography

Karen Ryan, University of Virginia

Karen Ryan is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. She has written extensively on Russian literary satire of the twentieth century. Her book Contemporary Russian Satire: A Genre Study (Cambridge University Press, 1995) explores genre parody in satire of the post-Stalin period, treating Iskander, Venedikt Erofeev, Limonov, Dovlatov, and Voinovich. Her most recent book, Stalin in Russian Satire, 1917-1991 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), examines images of Stalin in satire and the dynamics of scapegoating, liminalization, and cultural catharsis. Ryan’s earlier work includes a monograph on the Russian publicistic feuilleton of the glasnost period and numerous articles on Russian satirical literature. She has also edited a collection of articles on Venedikt Erofeev’s Moskva-Petushki (Peter Lang, 1997). Professor Ryan is currently working on a book about Russian hybrid literature of the last decade (Lara Vapnyar, David Bezmozgis, Gary Shteyngart, Sana Krasikov, and others).

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Published

2011-02-05