Authors

Discussion

My talk will discuss representations of a modern female identity among Russian women writers of the first emigration as depicted in both fiction and memoirs. In France Nina Berberova in her fiction (which can be juxtaposed to her own autobiographical writings), often uses memoirs as a device to trace of her characters' sense of an evolving modern identity. I will compare and contrast her work with memoirs and fictional works of young women coming to adulthood in the Russian community in China after the revolution. Both are reacting to not only the loss of social position and traditional paths and values due to emigration while at the same time discovering a feeling of liberation that comes with being in a new environment, even if it is one fraught with financial challenges and ethnic stereotypes. In both environments the dislocation allows them to forge a more modern sense of self. The semi-autobiographical novels of Nina Fedorova and the memoirs of Nina Mokrinskaia and Helen Yakobsen depict women's experiences in China which I would compare to those of Berberova and her characters in France.