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Mother Winter
Mother Winter: A Memoir | Sophia Shalmiyev
5 posts | 3 read | 1 reading | 9 to read
Vividly awesome and truly great. Eileen Myles I love this gorgeous, gutting, unforgettable book.Leni Zumas A rich tapestry of autobiography and meditations on feminism, motherhood, art, and culture, this book is as intellectually satisfying as it is artistically profound. A sharply intelligent, lyrically provocative memoir. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) An arresting memoir equal parts refugee-coming-of-age story, feminist manifesto, and meditation on motherhood, displacement, gender politics, and art that follows award-winning writer Sophia Shalmiyevs flight from the Soviet Union, where she was forced to abandon her estranged mother, and her subsequent quest to find her. Russian sentences begin backward, Sophia Shalmiyev tells us on the first page of her striking, lyrical memoir, Mother Winter. To understand the end of her story we must go back to her beginning. Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev was raised in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). An imbalance of power and the prevalence of antisemitism in her homeland led her father to steal Shalmiyev away, emigrating to America, abandoning her estranged mother, Elena. At age eleven, Shalmiyev found herself on a plane headed west, motherless and terrified of the new world unfolding before her. Now a mother herself, in Mother Winter Shalmiyev depicts in urgent vignettes her emotional journeys as an immigrant, an artist, and a woman raised without her mother. She tells of her early days in St. Petersburg, a land unkind to women, wayward or otherwise; her tumultuous pit-stop in Italy as a refugee on her way to America; the life she built for herself in the Pacific Northwest, raising two children of her own; and ultimately, her cathartic voyage back to Russia as an adult, where she searched endlessly for the alcoholic mother she never knew. Braided into her physical journey is a metaphorical exploration of the many surrogate mothers Shalmiyev sought out in place of her ownwhether in books, art, lovers, or other lost souls banded together by their misfortunes. Mother Winter is the story of Shalmiyevs years of travel, searching, and forging meaningful connection with the worlds she occupiesthe result is a searing observation of the human heart and psyches many shades across time and culture. As critically acclaimed author Michelle Tea says, with sparse, poetic language Shalmiyev builds a personal history that is fractured and raw; a brilliant, lovely ache.
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FeministBookClub
Mother Winter: A Memoir | Sophia Shalmiyev
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Did you love yesterday‘s podcast interview with Sophia Shalmiyev? Then enter to win her gorgeous book! All the details: bit.ly/FBCgiveaway35 #giveaway

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blurb
FeministBookClub
Mother Winter: A Memoir | Sophia Shalmiyev
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[NEW PODCAST]

Sophia Shalmiyev emigrated from Leningrad to America in 1990. She is a feminist writer and painter living in Portland with her two children. Shalmiyev‘s work has appeared in Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Portland Review and other publications. Mother Winter is her first book.

Tune in on your favorite podcast app or stream from www.feministbookclub.com/mother-winter
We're giving away a copy of Mother Winter at bit.ly/FBCgiveaway35

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FeministBookClub
Mother Winter: A Memoir | Sophia Shalmiyev
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I may have described the writing as “a postmodern fever dream.” 🤷🏻‍♀️

Cinfhen Another book I‘m eager to read 😃 5y
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review
ontheBL
Mother Winter: A Memoir | Sophia Shalmiyev
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Pickpick

Mother Winter by Sophia Shalmiyev from Simon Books is one of the most memorable and interesting memoirs I have ever read. She cuts through the bullshit and simultaneously maintains the poetic essence of the narrative. It is one of the few books I can't stop thinking about. Read my review of this marvelous memoir at

https://onthebl.org/2019/04/16/mother-winter/

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Bookalong
Mother Winter: A Memoir | Sophia Shalmiyev
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Pickpick

5/5🌟 A Gutting, Poetic and Brilliant Memoir!
Memoirs like this affirm why Memoir is my favorite genre!
The way Shalmiyev has constructed her life story is so alluring. How she grew up without a mother and the emptiness and longing that created to then becoming a mother herself, with reflections on her tramatic childhood and her journey of emigrating to America with her neglectful father.
One of the best memoirs I have ever read.
#bookreview

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