Laughing All the Way to Freedom

Laughing All the Way to Freedom

Americanization of a Russian Emigre

by Emil Draitser
©2024
231 pages

Publisher: McFarland
(January 25, 2024)

ISBN-10: 147669298X

ISBN-13: 978-1476692982

All immigrants of the world coming to America expect it to be like their home country—only better. What they often fail to consider is that, like that of any other nation, America's DNA differs from that of their country. It may take a lifetime to adjust to the unfamiliar country's culture, mentality, and way of doing many things differently from the way they have known. It is especially true when immigrants come to America from a country based on different principles, in this case, collectivist Russia versus individualist America, with opposing political systems—the democratic American one and the totalitarian Soviet. A sequel to the author’s autobiographical trilogy -- Shush! Growing up Jewish under Stalin, In the Jaws of the Crocodile, and Farewell, Mama Odessa, the book is part memoir and part cultural study about the challenges of immigration and American receptivity. With self-deprecating humor, the author, a former Soviet satirist punished for trespassing the boundaries of public criticism, recollects his growing pains as he overcomes his indoctrinated upbringing in an authoritarian society to learn and practice America’s democratic way of life.