Immigrant Baggage

Named one of 12 of the Best Jewish Books of the Year by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, New York Jewish Week, & Jerusalem Post2023 International Book Awards Finalist in the Humor/Comedy/Satire CategoryFrom a bilingual master of the literary memoir comes this movingand humorous story of losing immigrant baggage and trying to reclaim it for hisAmerican future. In this poignantliterary memoir, internationally acclaimed author and Boston College professorMaxim D. Shrayer (Waiting for America) explores both material andimmaterial aspects of immigrant baggage. Through a combination of dispassionatereportage, gentle irony, and confessional remembrance, Shrayer writes about traversingthe borders and boundaries of the three cultures that have nourishedhimRussian, Jewish, and American. The spirit of nonconformism and the power oflaughter come to the rescue of Shrayers autobiographical protagonist when hefaces existential calamities and lifes misadventures. The aftermathof a dangerous ski accident in Italy reminds the memoirist of historys blackholes. A haunting, Soviet-era theatrical affair pushes the émigré protagonistto the brink of a disaster in a provincial Russian town. Attempting to collect overdueroyalties from a Moscow publisher, the expatriate writer tips his hat to Kafka.The books six interconnected tales are held together by the memoristsimperative to make the ordinary absurd and the absurdordinary. Shrayer parsesa translingual literary life filled with travel, politics, and discoveryandsustained by family love and faith in arts transcendence.