In this beautifully written memoir,
Margaret Mordukhovich traces her life from her early childhood during Stalin’s era in the Soviet Union through her school years, marriage, and the birth of her children, to the process of emigrating during Perestroika and finally beginning a new life in the United States, ultimately settling in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She skillfully weaves together events, thoughts, feelings, and experiences with important historical context, allowing readers to gain a deeper understanding of the times she lived in and how they shaped her. She introduces us to the most important people in her life, both past and present, and invites readers to deeply understand the struggles of those times, as well as the unexpected triumphs.
In this beautifully written memoir,
Margaret Mordukhovich traces her life from her early childhood during Stalin’s era in the Soviet Union through her school years, marriage, and the birth of her children, to the process of emigrating during Perestroika and finally beginning a new life in the United States, ultimately settling in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She skillfully weaves together events, thoughts, feelings, and experiences with important historical context, allowing readers to gain a deeper understanding of the times she lived in and how they shaped her. She introduces us to the most important people in her life, both past and present, and invites readers to deeply understand the struggles of those times, as well as the unexpected triumphs.
In this beautifully written memoir,
Margaret Mordukhovich traces her life from her early childhood during Stalin’s era in the Soviet Union through her school years, marriage, and the birth of her children, to the process of emigrating during Perestroika and finally beginning a new life in the United States, ultimately settling in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She skillfully weaves together events, thoughts, feelings, and experiences with important historical context, allowing readers to gain a deeper understanding of the times she lived in and how they shaped her. She introduces us to the most important people in her life, both past and present, and invites readers to deeply understand the struggles of those times, as well as the unexpected triumphs.
About Margaret
Margaret Mordukhovich was born in the former Soviet Union. She comes from a long line of rabbis and Talmudic scholars, and many members of her family were disenfranchised by the authorities due to suppression of religion and rampant antisemitism. Her early childhood memories were filled with horrors of the Stalin era and stories about the Second World War and the Holocaust. This background taught Margaret to think independently even in the face of massive Soviet propaganda.
Her parents always encouraged Margaret’s passion for reading. The family did not have a lot of money, but there were always a lot of books in their home.
Margaret has been thinking up stories and writing poems of her own since before she can remember. Her early verses were even printed in children’s newspapers. At sixteen, she appeared on local radio and TV in her native city of Minsk to present her poetry, resulting in a long-running daily load of fan mail. But later she fell in love with mathematics and got a Master of Science degree in that field.
Margaret came to the United States as a political refugee with her husband and two daughters. Upon leaving the Soviet Union, virtually all they could take with them was their education. It was a very difficult transition, but one she is proud to have experienced. This country became home for her and her family. Margaret had a successful career as a Computer Scientist and has lived for more than 35 years in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She enjoys traveling, wildlife photography, reading, and, of course, writing.
Fully bilingual and shaped by two great cultures, American and Russian, Margaret writes a Russian-language travel blog and has published a children’s book Wuffy the Wonder Dog in English.
“”My First Life” is a gem. In prose that’s straightforward and sometimes sparkling, Margaret Mordukhovich traces her roots from the shtetls of czarist Russia, unflinchingly narrating the brutlality of the Nazi occupiers who murdered so many of her family members. Mrs. Mordukhovich was born several years after World War II, but she relies on close relatives to flesh out the lethal anti-Semitism of her ancestral town’s Nazi occupiers. For decades. she and her mathematician husband Boris tried to flee yet another anti-Semitic web that kept them trapped in Minsk, finally making it to the U.S. during Perestroika with little more than the clothes they were wearing. They settled in Ann Arbor, Mich., where Boris achieved renown in his field and Margaret worked as a computer scientist. This book is a great reminder that the anti-semitic gestures that we now see so frequently in the U.S. –are dead serious. At the same time, “My First Life” is brimming with fascinating details of daily Russian life just a generation ago: Who knew that toilet paper was so scarce in Minsk in the 1970s that rich women would wear toilet-paper necklaces to flaunt their wealth? As a retired journalist (LA Times, mostly), I appreciate these gotta-be-real touches! I should say here that I became acquainted with Margaret before reading her book. Thanks to one of the ancestry websites, we both discovered that we are remotely related cousins with roots in the Belarussian town of Schedrin. Margaret’s father lost some 40 family members there when the Nazis shot nearly all the town’s Jews on March 8, 1942.”