Tears Over Russia: A Search for Family and the Legacy of Ukraine’s Pogroms with author Lisa Brahin

Tears Over Russia: A Search for Family and the Legacy of Ukraine’s Pogroms
A virtual author talk with Lisa Brahin
Thursday, March 2nd | 7:00 PM ET
Advanced registration required by Weds. March 1st

Struggle and resilience take center stage in Lisa Brahin’s Tears Over Russia, a meticulous attempt to reconstruct not only a family’s roots in present-day Ukraine and their travails on their way to America, but also the intricacies of the world they left behind. Using interviews, legal and historical documents, and literature from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Brahin retraces the formation of her family and the loss of their hometown, Stavishche, to mounting antisemitism in the first half of the twentieth century. In doing so, she provides us a unique narrative that does not endorse or glamorize immigration to the United States (or the “Goldene Medine”) and does not shy away from depicting the emotional and physical toll of the period’s pogroms on Ukraine’s Jews. Ultimately she concludes that “… if there were no adversity, pain, or suffering, or a story to tell, it is doubtful that anyone would venture across an ocean and leave their world, with everything and everyone they love in it, behind.”

The book is available to order from our local partner, Longfellow Books. Limited signed copies are available.