I am writing this newsletter from Vrachesh - a small village outside of Sofia, Bulgaria - where we are currently visiting my parents. They live on a small piece of land that has been in my dad’s side of the family for hundreds of years. Being here feels very emotional to me.
I immigrated to the United States on my own when I was only 18 years old. I moved for college, stayed for grad school, met a guy. Traveling back and forth between Bulgaria and the States felt very hard for a long time. I loved the life I was building in the States but I missed my friends and family so deeply. I felt sad that I was missing important milestones, a few times I found myself in messy romantic relationships because I felt like I was living two parallel lives.
After I married my husband and we settled in Memphis, things began to feel a little simpler. I think my heart finally relaxed into my choice - you chose to be an immigrant, it said - and that was that. Little by little I let things go - I stopped reading in Bulgarian, then stopped following the news on a daily basis, I let many casual friendships go. I didn’t make this as a conscious choice, but now I know I was doing what I needed to do to protect myself from the constant heartbreak.
Then…I became a mother.
She is 7 years old now. We named her Rumyana, Rumi for short. It’s a traditional Bulgarian name that means “a healthy and happy girl; a girl with rosy cheeks”. I didn’t start speaking Bulgarian to her when she was little but I am trying to catch up. She loves it here. She loves her grandparents. She tells everyone she is HALF-BULGARIAN. She corrects her friends when they mispronounce SOFIA. I let the Bulgarian part of me go, but now this 7-year-old wants it back.
So here we are. Trying to do normal things with her in this little house, in this beautiful garden, with my sweet little parents. We are traveling some but mostly focusing on the basics - eating sunflower seeds, visiting with cousins, picking raspberries and cucumbers from the garden. Reading on a blanket, under the cherry tree. We don’t want her to feel like she is visiting Bulgaria. We want to help her feel Bulgarian.
Very often I wonder if my parents and my kid will ever feel a real connection because Rumi doesn’t (yet) speakBulgarian and, despite their best efforts, my parents’ English is still pretty rough. But then I looked up from my own book (Miranda July’s All Fours. Y’all. Y’ALL!!!!!)…. and there is my kid - sitting in a swing, reading Harriet the Hamster, being pushed by her baba, who is sitting on a chair… reading her own book.
My heart relaxes. Of course they are connected. One of them is only half-Bulgarian but both of them are FULL-ON-readers.
If you are curious to try reading some Bulgarian authors, here are a couple of recommendations:
📚 Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov - a novel about an experimental clinic that treats dementia patients by housing them on different floors, each floor meticulously furnished to represent a different decade of the past where the patient felt most comfortable. Soon healthy people and entire nations want to take advantage of the therapy, hoping to not only re-experience a “better” past but also influence their future. This is a fantastic book that was awarded the International Booker Prize last year and I believe totally deserves all the hype.
📚 He May Wear My Silence by Zdravka Evtimova - this is a book that I haven’t read yet but dying to. It’s described as a genre-blurring novel - science fiction, fantasy and magical realism - drawing heavily on Bulgarian folklore. It has a cast of characters chasing after elusive Samodivas - lone wild women from Bulgarian mythology who sometimes kill and sometimes help people - after a famous scientist hypothesizes that they are actually an extraterrestrial civilization that inhabits the human subconscious. I don’t typically read scifi or fantasy but fucking LOVE samodivas and this book just won the super prestigious Starship Sloane Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Award and was nominated for the Pushcart.
Some question for you:
How connected do you feel to where you are from?
Which book reminds you of home, however you define that?
Loved reading this, how wonderful that you are reconnected with your home country! Especially for your daughter. Thanks for the reading suggestions too!
As the daughter of an immigrant, this made me so choked up. Thank you for this candour, Petya. Can't wait to read those books you've recommended.