No Words to Say Goodbye: A Young Jewish Woman's Journey from the Soviet Union into America the Extraordinary Diaries of Raimonda Kopelnitsky - Hardcover

Kopelnitsky--a young Jewish girl from the Ukraine--keeps a moving diary about her family's emigration to America. On September 2, 1989, Kopelnitsky, who's now 15, began to record her family's transition from life in a Ukrainian village- -where the reality of anti-Semitism and the aftermath of Chernobyl made normal existence impossible--to a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. Like many Russian Jews, her family's history had been traumatic--a legacy of suffering through pogroms and losses in war- -but distinguished by professional accomplishments: Her mother and father were educated as engineers, with her mother going on to become an architectural restorer and her father a successful illustrator. Kopelnitsky began her diaries as a naive, hopeful, and well-loved child, trusting that America was an exciting place full of cakes and candy. But she grew into a more knowing teenager, one who here (with the assistance of Entertainment Weekly writer Pryor) offers an honest record of the problems of leading a life in translation. With a child's clarity, she describes the trip from the Ukraine to Vienna; from Vienna to Italy; and from Italy to New York. The family was housed and fed along the way, and was given stipends by Jewish organizations. Kopelnitsky records the dirt, the tension, the family fights, and the drama that became a regular part of her life: ``We flew on Pan Am for twelve hours. A black woman in a colorful gown gave birth on the plane, and a Russian woman helped out. It was a girl.'' The family's arrival in the States wasn't easy: Their days were clouded by frequent tears and mood shifts, and darkened by a roach-filled hotel in Manhattan and the bureaucratic problems of dealing with new places. But through luck and persistence, they began to feel a newfound happiness and security in the three years that the diary covers. A difficult and very affecting odyssey, told with charm and grace. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Publishing teenager Raimonda's emigre experiences in the form of her diary is at once the book's power and its limitation. In 1989 an ambivalent Kopelnitsky family--parents Klavdia and Igor, both engineers; Simon, b.1970; Raimonda, b.1977--emigrated from Ukraine to Brooklyn, leaving a comfortable lifestyle for economic uncertainty and emotional displacement. The earlier sections of the diary are the most affecting, as when the Kopelnitskys sell their possessions and 11-year-old Raimonda observes, "our pasts are dying in our present." When the family encounters the West, she marvels at "how much of everything there is!" Yet, Raimonda soon faces a truism: "Refugees--without this word we wouldn't know who we are." The later sections, overdramatized with prepubescent moodiness, note frequent family squabbles without an awareness of the poignant dynamics, and take note of Raimonda's progress in school. In New York City, the Kopelnitskys are aided by Jewish groups and befriended by coauthor Pryor, who arranged for publication of this diary. One hopes that in her newfound celebrity Raimonda doesn't continue to style herself as Anne Frank, or take so seriously the adults in her life who liken her to Anna Akhmatova (the book's title is taken from one of Raimonda's poems).
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.