Moscow, she planned to teach literature.
While Vapnyar was homebound, her
mother would bring her discarded books
she would find. After reading a history
of the Academy Awards, Vapnyar had
the idea for a screenplay about a family
watching the awards ceremonies.
She wrote 20 pages, then bought a
book on writing screenplays and wrote
additional scripts. Following the instruc-
tions in her book, she sent the screen-
plays -- which were not about immi-
grants and were modeled on mainstream
Hollywood movies — out widely and
even had some interest. As she began
writing a new screenplay, she found she
got stuck.
"I wanted to say so much more. There
were stories inside of me that I had no
idea I wanted to tell," she says.
When she felt she couldn't write
deeply enough in the screenplays, she
began writing stories.
A friend passed on a copy of her first
story, "Ovrashki's Train," to a literary
agent, who liked it very much. The
agent asked to see more stories and she
didn't have any — so she set out to write
others.
Her first publication was her story
"Mistress," which appeared in Open
She then got a book contract, and
the New Yorker ran "Love Lessons" last
summer in their fiction debut issue. Her
story "Broccoli" — a new story not in
this collection — appeared earlier this
year.
Vapnyar, now pursuing a doctorate in
comparative literature from CUNY, lives
on Staten Island with her husband,
mother and two children, ages 6 and 9.
She's at work on a novel with parts
Russian and American.
Her short-story collection's title story,
"There Are Jews in My House," is set in
a small Ukrainian village in World War
II, as the Germans are about to invade.
Galina and her young daughter hide a
Jewish colleague and her daughter, but
their friendship fades amidst generosity,
jealousy, anti-Semitism and fear.
The story begins with Galina carrying
a steaming pot of boiled potatoes.
Vapnyar's skill at detail is soon evident,
as she notices how each of the four
women eats her nightly potato distinc-
tively — whether peeled, broken into
pieces, cut in half or bitten into whole.
In 'A Question for Vera," a child in
preschool is told by the tallest girl in
class and "recognized authority on life"
that she's a Jewess, words Vera had never
heard before.
That story also begins with food, with
Vera unable to leave the class dining
table until she finishes the stale roll that
seems to be growing on her plate. Also
.
growing is her anxiety about being last
at the table.
When asked about the many refer-
ences to food in the stories, Vapnyar
replies, "Russians are always concerned
with food. I am fascinated with bad
food, rather than good food. It's so
much more interesting. When you want
to read about good food, you can read a
cookbook. I love describing bad food."
Several of the stories are told from the
point of view of a child, and Vapnyar
succeeds in capturing the curious ways
young people see the world. "I think I
just remember childhood very well,"
Vapnyar says, when asked about this.
'And having small children helps."
The characters in "Mistress," the one
story with a New York setting, sound
like the people encountered on the
boardwalk in Brighton Beach. "The der-
matologist had a mistress," is the first
line, as a young boy accompanying his
grandmother to the doctor as her trans-
lator listens to the waiting room conver-
sations.
At home, his grandmother cooks with
the pots she brought with her from
Russia, along with a heavy hand-operat-
ed meat grinder, which requires her hus-
band's help. The grandfather spends his
days at home until he is persuaded to
take English classes, where his life is
changed, witnessed by the boy when
they take a walk together.
"Mistress" was inspired by a friend
who told her of being taken by his
grandfather to the apartment of a
woman friend, not his mistress. Some of
the stories have their roots in Vapnyar's
own story. In preschool, she too was told
to her surprise that she was a Jewess.
Growing up, she knew that being a
Jew was considered inferior: As a child
she was ashamed of the family's Jewish
identity and later on, as a young adult,
she knew that she had to work extra
hard to get into college.
The book's title still surprises her. In
trying to come up with a title for the
collection, her editor suggested using the
name of this story, which is the first in
the book.
"With my Russian mentality, it seems
shocking to me to use Jewish in the title
or anywhere," she says.
In Moscow, she never heard the word
Jewish in Russian in television or in
books. "But at the same time," she adds,
"I think it's a very Jewish book, so why
not have it in the title?
"The mix of sadness and humor [in
the collection] is something very
Jewish," she says. "It seems to be that it
has a Jewish soul." fl
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