Emi­ly Schnei­der speaks with acclaimed author and illus­tra­tor Yev­ge­nia Nay­berg about her new graph­ic mem­oir, Cher­nobyl, Life, and Oth­er Dis­as­ters. They delve into Nayberg’s depic­tion of her fam­i­ly, her expe­ri­ences with Jew­ish iden­ti­ty and anti­semitism in the Sovi­et Union, and how she struc­tured her stun­ning new work. 

Emi­ly Schnei­der: Yev­ge­nia, most peo­ple, look­ing back on their child­hood, remem­ber some event as being a dis­as­ter. In your life, the Cher­nobyl nuclear inci­dent in 1986 over­lapped with your approach­ing ado­les­cence, and appli­ca­tions to art school. How did you decide to struc­ture your new graph­ic mem­oir (Cher­nobyl, Life, and Oth­er Dis­as­ters) around these events?

Yev­ge­nia Nay­berg: Well, for me, it turned out to be a bless­ing in dis­guise, in a way, because of how it affect­ed the Jew­ish quo­ta for that year. When you read the book, you know that my moth­er was prep­ping me for the fact that I may not ever get into art school because of the quo­ta. Due to Cher­nobyl, there weren’t enough peo­ple that applied, so I was able to get in. I’d like to think that I was able to get in because of my mar­velous tal­ents, but there was this oth­er com­po­nent. Obvi­ous­ly, it was a big dis­as­ter, but, iron­i­cal­ly, it cre­at­ed a step­ping-stone moment for me and my career as an artist.

ES: In read­ing the book, it struck me that you don’t men­tion Jew­ish iden­ti­ty on every page, but it’s always implic­it­ly there. How did you decide to frame your com­ing-of-age mem­oir as an artist around Jew­ish iden­ti­ty and antisemitism?

YN: It’s such a huge part of my iden­ti­ty. It has always been and some­times, as you know from the book, I wish it was­n’t always omnipresent. It was­n’t the focus of the mem­oir, but I could not avoid it because encoun­ters with anti­semitism were such a big part of my life grow­ing up. I left Ukraine when I was nine­teen. It would have been a dif­fer­ent book; I did­n’t want to steal from the main focus, but it is com­plete­ly unavoid­able. Anti­semitism is such a huge part of grow­ing up Jew­ish in the Sovi­et Union, that it just would not have been hon­est to ignore that com­po­nent altogether.

ES: There is an unfor­get­table scene where Genya (Yev­ge­nia) has learned that she’s Jew­ish from two bul­ly­ing school­mates and she has a con­ver­sa­tion with her moth­er about it. There is an econ­o­my of lan­guage, and also of ges­tures. Moth­er and daugh­ter are viewed from dif­fer­ent angles in each frame. Genya begins, ​“Mama, am I a Yid?” ​“Who told you that?” ​“The fat Lena and the small Lena.” You con­dense the whole range of anti­semitism with that one phrase; it’s ter­rif­ic. How did you incor­po­rate into Genya’s char­ac­ter her Jew­ish­ness, being an artist, being left-hand­ed, hav­ing a first name more typ­i­cal for boys, as well as oth­er ways that you repeat­ed­ly refer to your­self as being different?

YN: I am myself and I’m also the char­ac­ter, and they are slight­ly dif­fer­ent. In my own six-year-old world, hav­ing a boy’s name, short hair, and being Jew­ish, all had the same kind of weight. As an adult, I thought that was an inter­est­ing com­ic twist. For the adults read­ing the book, espe­cial­ly for Jew­ish adults, they under­stand what it actu­al­ly means, when a child says, ​“Oh no. If it was­n’t enough that I had to wear pants, now I’m also a Jew!” So, of course, there is this tongue-in-cheek way of describ­ing some­thing that is real­ly huge. For many Sovi­et kids, we all remem­ber that moment when we learned that we were Jew­ish, and it was nev­er a nice or cel­e­bra­to­ry moment. It’s always an instance when some­one out­side your fam­i­ly, some­one in the build­ing court­yard, would let you know in the most dis­gust­ing way. And then you bring it home, and it’s always a spon­ta­neous, sud­den con­ver­sa­tion that a lot of fam­i­ly mem­bers would dread and would­n’t know how to approach.

ES: Through­out the mem­oir you com­mu­ni­cate on mul­ti­ple lev­els at once, so that if you’re an adult read­ing the mem­oir, you iden­ti­fy with the anx­ious par­ent, while the child is think­ing, why won’t you answer my ques­tion? Anoth­er instance of this dual­i­ty is when Genya’s moth­er tries to explain to her why she has to make a piece in an aca­d­e­m­ic art style, ​“Young Pio­neers Fix­ing the Play­ground,” to even have a chance to get into the school. At which point, she might have the chance to pro­duce exper­i­men­tal art that feels gen­uine to her. How did that para­dox­i­cal, artis­tic advice affect your devel­op­ment as an artist?

YN: Over­all, Sovi­et life was made out of this dual­i­ty, and every­one under­stood it very ear­ly on. Peo­ple telling jokes about the gov­ern­ment at home, but then tak­ing it seri­ous­ly in real life. And I think this is some­thing that the Amer­i­can audi­ence, at least old­er read­ers, may be able to under­stand quite well, just, the need to be care­ful, and not say some­thing that could be tak­en the wrong way. When you grow up with this, you don’t even ques­tion it. I knew that I had to behave in a cer­tain way. It was some­thing that was required for me to move for­ward as an artist, and I was just hop­ing that I’d be able to do what­ev­er I want­ed after. There is a moment about it in the book where I come home from the exams, exhaust­ed from work­ing on the ​“Young Pio­neers Fix­ing the Play­ground,” and I can final­ly be myself and draw what I love. That was always present. I feel like every­one was under­stand­ing of that. I’m sure there were peo­ple who real­ly believed it, but I don’t know any­one in the Sovi­et intel­li­gentsia envi­ron­ment who were real believ­ers in com­mu­nism, or believed that what­ev­er they heard on the radio was true.

ES: That dual­i­ty also reminds me of your per­cep­tion of your grand­fa­ther. You assumed he wor­ships Brezh­nev, and then, unbe­liev­ably, when Brezh­nev dies, he does­n’t seem to be par­tic­u­lar­ly upset.

In the mem­oir, par­ents, grand­par­ents, and sib­lings, are a pro­tec­tive cir­cle around you, but they’re also, at the same time, obsta­cles to your aspi­ra­tions. How did you write about your fam­i­ly mem­bers with­out sentimentality?

YN: I think it’s the key word that you just used. As I was writ­ing, I real­ized that the only way to write a good mem­oir is not to be sen­ti­men­tal about your child­hood. I think once you become cute or wist­ful about the child that you were you can no longer write hon­est­ly. I want­ed to have this remove. Not a cold look, obvi­ous­ly, I sym­pa­thize with Genya, and my fam­i­ly, but I nev­er thought of her (or myself) as this cute lit­tle charm­ing girl. I just want­ed to be hon­est, real­is­tic, and sar­cas­tic, so a part of her char­ac­ter is myself today, just look­ing at this pre­co­cious child, but not think­ing sweet­ly of her or of my fam­i­ly mem­bers. Although it’s very hard, because I love them dear­ly, those who are still liv­ing, and those who are no longer here. It’s tricky, because as I was writ­ing I did want to height­en them, to make them look bet­ter. But I don’t think I made them look bad. I just made them com­pli­cat­ed and inter­est­ing, and I think that’s the key to writ­ing an hon­est memoir.

ES: So much of your ear­li­er work echoes in this book. In Anya’s Secret Soci­ety, a left-hand­ed child in Rus­sia copes with prej­u­dice and dreams about an alter­na­tive world pop­u­lat­ed by left-hand­ed artists. In A Par­ty for Florine, an immi­grant Jew­ish girl iden­ti­fies with Florine Stet­theimer, an uncon­ven­tion­al fem­i­nist artist from a pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion. And in I Hate Borsch!, a child in Amer­i­ca comes to love a food that, in her pre­vi­ous home­land, she real­ly dis­liked. You always iden­ti­fy with the out­sider. Being Jew­ish and an artist, how impor­tant is that out­sider sta­tus to your work, and to this mem­oir in particular?

YN: It’s a real­ly great ques­tion, because I don’t think it’s a con­scious choice. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this ques­tion, since I wrote the mem­oir, but I nev­er thought of it for a sec­ond. I just tried to be hon­est about how I feel and how my char­ac­ters feel. Obvi­ous­ly, my char­ac­ters are not exact­ly me, but they do have some of me in them. I love borsch! I’m always inter­est­ed in peo­ple that try to explore the world in an uncon­ven­tion­al way, who don’t march with the crowds. If I’m one of those peo­ple, that’s real­ly excit­ing and flat­ter­ing for me to hear.

ES: You men­tioned your hair ear­li­er, anoth­er fea­ture that con­nects you to your out­sider sta­tus. You describe it lit­er­al­ly, but it also becomes a metaphor. It takes you many years to grow a braid, which you describe as resem­bling a smoked her­ring. Lat­er in the book, it’s a radioac­tive arti­fact, and even­tu­al­ly, you feel lib­er­at­ed from it. How did Genya’s hair become a motif through­out the book?

YN: It was actu­al­ly a start­ing point for the book, because I thought it was a real­ly inter­est­ing sto­ry. I thought it was a fun­ny thing how I was grow­ing this hair out, and how I lost it, and the fact that I nev­er grew it out again. When I real­ized that this could be part of the sto­ry, I thought of it as a pic­ture book, but it seemed a lit­tle too heavy, or too long. When you read it as an adult, as you said, it’s a very strong metaphor­ic sym­bol in the mid­dle of the book, kind of the anchor that holds the book togeth­er. But that anchor is acci­den­tal, since it real­ly did hap­pen. Life is bet­ter than art. You just have to look. And, in fact, my moth­er has only very vague mem­o­ries of that inci­dent. She remem­bers that she cut my hair, but she does­n’t real­ly remem­ber all the dra­ma that sur­round­ed it. That tells you some­thing about how mem­o­ry works, about what’s impor­tant, and what isn’t, for an adult and a child. There is a book with a cult fol­low­ing by a Russ­ian Jew­ish author that was nev­er trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. It’s called The Road Goes Into the Dis­tance, by Alexan­dra Brushtein. It’s about the ear­ly 1900s, and a Jew­ish intel­li­gentsia fam­i­ly sto­ry. I always iden­ti­fied with the char­ac­ter of the lit­tle girl, and her amaz­ing rela­tion­ship with her father. I read this book when I vis­it­ed my mom, and it became a spe­cial expe­ri­ence for me. I would read a chap­ter or two, and, at some point, I real­ized that I no longer iden­ti­fied with the girl. Instead, I real­ly iden­ti­fied with the father. This qual­i­ty is what I want­ed for my book as well. I want the kids to relate to Genya, but I want adults to read the same book from the point of view of my mom. So it works on many lev­els for dif­fer­ent ages, but dif­fer­ent­ly for each reader.

ES: Books meant a lot to you grow­ing up in a repres­sive society.

YN: Books meant every­thing, they were a world to escape to. I real­ly resist­ed read­ing before I start­ed school. My fam­i­ly want­ed me to be a flu­ent read­er before I entered first grade. They would com­pare me to a cou­ple of lit­tle girls who could read just great at age four. But I just could­n’t, and I nev­er thought I would become a read­er; then I start­ed school, and it was instant. After that I was always read­ing what­ev­er was in the house. Nobody ever cen­sored me, and I would read what­ev­er I could reach on a shelf. I loved Sholem Ale­ichem and my grand­fa­ther had vol­umes of his books. I loved read­ing them because I felt very con­nect­ed to my cul­ture in some way, because it was also such a pri­vate thing that no one else read. I did­n’t have any oth­er Jew­ish kids with me in school. There was por­tion from Aleichem’s unfin­ished nov­el, Motl, Peysi the Cantor’s Son, that real­ly struck me The first line goes, ​“I’m real­ly lucky I’m an orphan.” I just love this line so much, and as I was writ­ing this book, I thought about it a lot. I am writ­ing about dis­as­ters and trag­ic events, but I can make any­thing into an amus­ing story.

ES: Your upcom­ing pic­ture book, Anoth­er Tongue, is about learn­ing lan­guage. How did you con­vey your char­ac­ters’ thoughts and speech authen­ti­cal­ly when writ­ing in English?

YN: I real­ly don’t like when books about immi­grants, or about peo­ple from dif­fer­ent countries,

sound exot­ic and accent­ed. I want­ed peo­ple to have an immer­sive expe­ri­ence, and the lan­guage to sound as nor­mal and as flu­ent as if my char­ac­ters were speak­ing Eng­lish. While, of course, they weren’t. There are stan­dard trans­la­tions for many terms that the Sovi­et Union used, but, instead, I tried to find some­thing that would sound flu­ent and nor­mal and would­n’t take the read­er out of the sto­ry. As a writer, it was impor­tant to cre­ate that very smooth, con­tem­po­rary language. 

ES: Your mem­oir is fun­da­men­tal­ly about becom­ing an artist, and that process hap­pened for you dur­ing child­hood and adult­hood. One pic­ture, of metic­u­lous­ly labeled artis­tic tools, is com­posed against graph paper, almost like an inter­lude in the narrative. 

YN: On the page pri­or to that, my mom says, col­lect your art sup­plies. That is my list of things I took with me to Vol­gograd, escap­ing the radi­a­tion, because I knew that I would have to draw. I drew every day, and I draw every day of my life still.

ES: Right before the epi­logue, there’s a pic­ture when you’ve been accept­ed to art school. You’re a child work­ing at your table, and yet mov­ing away from child­hood. The text states, ​“I’m no longer a tal­ent­ed child. I’m final­ly a real artist.” 

YN: There was no Hog­warts when I was grow­ing up, so this is anachro­nis­tic, but I felt that instant sense of belong­ing once I came to art school on my first day. I remem­ber going home and think­ing, I final­ly met my peo­ple. I’m where I belong, it’s going to be amazing.

ES: The final pic­ture shows you at the table as an adult, with your back to the read­er. There’s a pile of some of your select­ed works. A cup of cof­fee, pen­cils, and brush­es. All the nec­es­sary arti­cles for your pro­fes­sion are set out on the table, and a pic­ture win­dow frames a view of the city. It’s hard to cap­ture the impact of this won­der­ful image in a description!

YN: Right now I’m speak­ing to you from the same table. I’m sit­ting at this table, and the city is right behind you. I want­ed to show myself, my younger self, the good things that will come my way even­tu­al­ly, even if I don’t know it yet. Some­thing amaz­ing will even­tu­al­ly hap­pen. I often think of that, of my younger self, if I were able to have a time machine and take a peek at my future, how sur­prised I would be at this unbe­liev­able life that I end­ed up hav­ing on many dif­fer­ent lev­els, not just as a suc­cess­ful artist, but just being able to grow up into a per­son, real­ly, even that. It’s a glimpse, I think, for read­ers, into the future.