{Bulgaria} Anxiety and Free Books

Kyle and I are leaving for Bulgaria on Tuesday. We are both excited, of course, but I'm also a tiny bit anxious. We were home around this time last year and in the months that followed our trip, my grandparents have been getting sicker and sicker to the point where everyone has started preparing for death, my dad's business (subcontracting with real estate developers) has been (understandably) doing really bad, and for the first time since coming to the State (1999), I really feel like my life is not there anymore.

That's a strange feeling to acknowledge. Contrary to the experience of many of my friends, I never really wanted to come to the States. Things just sort of happened that way and I ended up following in love (with a man AND with the country). However, I never lost touch with my friends. In fact, my best friends are Bulgarians living in Bulgaria who I met AFTER I moved to the States.

I'm not sure what has triggered the shift. I think it is not unrelated to finally settling down after so many years of nomadic existence. But that's not all. In the past year I have felt more irritated and exasperated with Bulgarian politics, social conservatism and provincialism. THIS has SOME to do with the conversations on my feminist blog but that's not all. It has to do with the pettiness of Bulgarian media, the total lack of vision in governance, the numerous attempts at creating "The Bulgarian X" as opposed to starting something genuine and authentic. I realize that this sounds both vague and pessimistic and probably, makes little sense to those of you who have not visited Bulgaria yet. Those of you who have... please let me know if you feel the same way.

The ONE thing that has actually helped me cope and clear my head about this is Cynthia Phoel's book, Cold Snap. I read it a few months ago while the book was still being edited. Now that it's out, I am packing my copy for our trip. The book is a collection of related short stories set in a small town, not much unlike the one where I grew up, in the mid-1990s. Many of the characters sound and feel like people I know well: hardworking women who manage, nurture and pull entire families forward; men who don't mean harm but end up harming many; eccentric and creative types who anywhere else in the world would be recognized for their free spirit and authenticity but in Bulgaria end up being laughed at and turning to knitting and mushroom-picking for release.

When I first read Cynthia's book, I just loved how brutally honest it was. I was simply smitten by her ability to describe a life both gritty AND tender, patriarchal AND loving, provincial but remarkably touching. In a way, the book really changed the way I think of Bulgaria and triggered a shift in the relationship I have with the stuff that has bothered me the most. That's why I am so excited that our BookClub is reading the book too!

Kyle and I leave for Bulgaria on Tuesday. Before we go, though, I would like to send a courtesy copy of Cold Snap to two How to Marry a Bulgarian readers. I only ask that if you do end up with a copy of the book, you promise to be active in our discussion of it towards the end of July! For a chance at winning a free copy, please leave a comment under this post with your name and email address. This will be a quick contest, since I need to mail the books tomorrow.

Good luck and happy reading.

Jokes about Bulgaria

My friends often poke fun of me for being from Bulgaria. It's all in good spirit, of course. In those jokes, Bulgaria is always a poverty-ridden, dusty place, where people have no consumer choice, are afraid of politicians (especially after dark) and spend hours waiting in line for bread. Not entirely unlike what Bulgaria was like under Communism (but that was 20 years ago).

I find this endlessly entertaining because it always leaves me wondering... this really is a joke, right? they don't really think we are that backward, right? they don't really think that about Bulgaria, right?

However that conversation goes in my head, it always ends the same.... Wait, wait... maybe they DO!

Does being an expat give you Dissociative Identity Disorder?

I have two blogs. It's hard to keep two blogs. Scratch that. It's almost IMPOSSIBLE to keep two blogs. I only say "almost" out of respect for people who actually do it quite successfully. Unfortunately, I am not one of them.

I bring this up here not because I feel like I should be apologizing for my absence (although, should you care to know, I was tending to my feminist calling). I only mention this because I feel that as expats/immigrants, etc., we often get pulled in multiple directions, which tends to keep us busy at best, anxious at worst. The Bulgarian* and the expat parts of our brains are at odds; oftentimes, for very sensible reasons. Sometimes, all the tugging... back and forth... starts to wear out our patience.

My two blogs, for example, are a direct representations of my Bulgarian and my expat inner worlds. And currently, I am so warn out of constantly negotiating that both have fallen neglected. We all have our ways of self-medicating and I am dealing by indulging in a short period of un-thoughtfulness. When I encounter a serious thought, I push it away. I know it sounds flippant, but it's what I need right now.

So, tell me, is this something you think about? Do you feel pulled in different directions by your "Bulgarian" and "expat" selves? How do you deal with your various identities? How do you make them co-exist? Have you been able to craft a unified identity for yourself? Do you sometimes feel like you are a character in a novel and the author of your book has decided to give you the gift of dissociative identity disorder?

*Plug in your own nationality here. Recently, I've been lucky to have some new readers, many of them expats, not necessarily with any Bulgaria connections. I am so happy you are here! I've always hoped it goes without saying that this blog is not *really* about Bulgaria or Bulgarians only.I look forward to getting to know you all better!

Guest Blogger: David Sedaris

I hope you're not getting tired of hearing me mention how awesome David Sedaris is. He is and I'm sorry. Really. I know that the world has been reading him for years. I myself had heard some of his NPR pieces and read some of his short stories in The New Yorker. It wasn't until just a couple of months ago that I actually picked up Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

Now, I don't think I can really speak to the literary merits of his work but I find Sedaris's reflections on expatriation very close both to my personal experience of being a foreigner and to my experience of building a relationship in an environment that presents both me and my husband with unusual challenges. That, I think, is the main reason I love him as much as I do.

The other day, actually, I thought it would be awesome if I could have Mr. Sedaris over as a guest-blogger. We would share embarrassing stories about our respective experiences as foreigners and laugh so hard until we were no longer able to distinguish whether we were being laughed with or laughed at. How awesome would that be?!

Also, since getting the actual David Sedaris to make an appearance on this wonderfully thoughtful blog is pretty much as likely as getting my own Dad to wear corduroy (chance=0), I think I'm going to turn a blind eye and blog in his name. I'm sure he wouldn't mind one bit. Also, he often mentions that he is such a Luddite that he hasn't actually seen the Internet yet, so I think I'd be safe.

Is Zadie Smith's new book a self-reflection guidebook for expats?

I sort of sounds like it is. Pankaj Mishra wrote a great review of Zadie Smith's freshly published book of essays, Changing My Mind. As a big fan of Smith's, I am crazy excited about this book. ESPECIALLY after learning that a number of Smith's essays deal with topics that I hold very close to my heart: the multiplicity of human identity, the ways in which our idealogical inconsistencies make us thrive, family, loss.

The idea that “the unified singular self is an illusion” could be the leitmotif of this collection. It allows Smith to revisit her own early assumptions and to question such essentialist notions as “black woman-ness.” Reflecting on Kafka’s ambivalence about his ethnic background, she writes: “There is a sense in which Kafka’s Jewish question (‘What have I in common with Jews?’) has become everybody’s question, Jewish alienation the template for all our doubts. What is Muslimness? What is femaleness? What is Polishness? What is Englishness? These days we all find our anterior legs flailing before us. We’re all insects, all Ungeziefer, now.”

This may sound a bit melodramatic. But then — as Salman Rushdie and other practitioners of postcolonial postmodernism have stressed — ambivalence, doubt and confusion are essential to forming dynamic new hybrid selves.

Sounds like a book that any expat would enjoy, doesn't it?

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Illustration by Tina Berning for The New York Times