bcc shines a light on: olga zilberbourg
BCC Shines a Light On: Olga Zilberbourg
Name of the piece published by BCC: Sweet Dreams
When/where was it originally published: Mad Hatters’ Review 12: Back from the USSR
Tell us more about your piece! What is the background of the piece? What led you to write it? What’s your process?
I drafted this story in 2010. At the core of the piece is a text exchange with my mother. She remained in Russia while I’d been living in the US since 1996. At the time, she had just started a new course in English. Her teacher was using song lyrics to teach students about grammar. I found it funny at the time that my mom was encountering for the first time the music that I’d been listening to for twenty years, and I was also fascinated with just how challenging these lyrics turned out to be for her. Not all the lyrics in the story are from that exercise; after the original exchange, I ran away with the idea and wrote the story around it.
How did you feel when it was first published and how have your thoughts or feelings on the piece changed from then to now?
I was very pleased to see this story in the issue of Mad Hatters’ Review that included a portfolio representing the work of English-language writers with roots in the USSR. Edited by Alexander Cigale and Mariya Gusev, that publication opened a whole world of writers from the former Soviet Union for me. I started to realize that my own work fit within a certain community, and that there were other writers with similar background who worked on similar themes and topics that interested me. This discovery proved very productive for my future writing and thinking. Currently, I myself co-edit a feminist blog dedicated to writing from the former Soviet Union, Punctured Lines.
Is there a specific message you would like readers to take away from reading this piece?
These days, Russia’s on the news a lot, and people in the US are used to making casual statements about it. But to understand what’s happening in Russia right now, it’s not enough to know the language or to follow the news. The bodily experience of people living there is still different from anything that we might appreciate from across the border. I intentionally left this story as a mother-daughter piece because I wanted to highlight how physical distance affects the communication between people who know each other intimately and once used to speak the same language.
What else would you like to tell readers about your writing? (Doesn’t have to refer only to your BCC piece)
In my subsequent work, I have continued to explore the themes of cultural difference, acculturation, and losing touch with one’s birth culture over time. As I go through seasons of life in emigration, new topics arise. Becoming a parent in a country where I didn’t grow up inspired many of the stories in my collection LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press, 2019). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transformed my relationship with my birthplace in a whole new way. I have written some about this too, for example, in this most recently published story, Make Peace with the Cake (Museum of Americana).
Where can readers find more of your work? (Website/social media, etc)
My website: https://zilberbourg.com/
Bluesky: @olgaz.bsky.social
I’m also findable on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Threads
