‘Panic in a Suitcase,’ by Yelena Akhtiorskaya (original) (raw)
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Some Assimilation Required
- Aug. 15, 2014
Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s impressive debut novel, “Panic in a Suitcase,” considers the precarious position of émigrés trying to build a life in America — specifically, Ukrainian émigrés trying to build a life in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach. Set there and in Odessa, Ukraine, the novel spans 15 years in the lives of the Nasmertov family. It opens in 1993 as Pasha, the only remaining family member in Odessa, visits Brighton Beach to see his cancer-stricken mother, the matriarch of the family. Pasha — sometimes called “the greatest poet not just in Odessa and not in all of Ukraine but in all of Russia” — is a beacon for his family, much to the curiosity of his young niece, Frida. Though the first half of the novel centers on the family’s attempt to coerce Pasha into moving to America, this beautifully drawn portrait of a splintered immigrant family is also about young Frida and her struggle to assimilate. Akhtiorskaya layers the novel with equal parts humor and anxiety, and expertly highlights the unease of having one foot in and one foot out of the old country.
It can be said there are two kinds of immigrants: those who leave behind their homeland and embrace America full-throttle, and those who long for home and migrate into a facsimile community in their adopted land. Both are a matter of survival, though no one has yet proved which is more effective in staving off the psychic pull of one’s native country. Akhtiorskaya writes about people resisting assimilation. She crawls down the streets of Brighton Beach’s thriving Russian community, through the hallways of apartment buildings full of refugees from Odessa, and captures the beauty in Brooklyn’s surrogate Black Sea town. The book succeeds, phenomenally, at presenting the immigrant duality within the Nasmertov family. When Pasha’s visa lapses, the family heaves a collective sigh of relief, knowing they will keep their tenuous connection to Odessa and their claim on the country home. With Pasha forever linked to the homeland, “Odessa remained theirs. This sense of retention, of not having exchanged or betrayed but simply enlarged in scope, kept virulent immigrant manias at bay.” They will always have an escape plan, just in case.
“Panic in a Suitcase” also raises the question: Is it better to stay in one’s home country and thrive, or come to America to struggle and possibly hit it bigger? The constant need to be upwardly mobile, to impress family members and acquaintances who stayed behind, proves exhausting. This drive to succeed — to be the better immigrant, the best assimilator — is neatly embodied in a secondary character, Pasha’s dubiously talented friend who left Odessa for the East Village. Their reunion, full of cringe-worthy humor, makes the novel as much about the struggle of artists as the struggle of immigrants.
When the book rejoins the Nasmertovs in 2008, Frida is buckling under the weight of the family’s pressure to succeed. On a break from medical school, she goes in search of herself in Odessa, booking a flight to attend her cousin’s wedding. What she finds is that her mysterious poet uncle, though hailed as “the Brodsky of our time” at Odessa dinner parties, is also aged, out of touch and past his prime. Frida, alienated, struggles with the pull of a place she hardly knows, a place so built up in her family’s imagination there is no way it can live up to the mythology. When Frida travels to the countryside to find her family’s vacation home (which Pasha has given away to his ex-wife), she finds the dacha nothing more than a pile of rubble.
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