Do I need to ditch my ex-Soviet roots?

The JCC of the Upper West Side (in New York City) held an art exhibition last month.  It was called “Migrants Nation” and, according to curator Vitaly Umansky, “Artists represented in this exhibition underwent assimilation either into an Israeli or American reality; they all have personal stories; they are all individuals. However, they all share one history. Regardless of the environment to which they had to assimilate to, they all have different levels of nostalgia, analysis, and assimilation.”

All of the artists in the exhibition were born in the former Soviet Union, and all emigrated as children in either the 1970s or 1980s. Exactly like me. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: ethnicity, multiculturalism, Russian

We don't all look like this.

I’m not a mother, yet, but I hope to be one day. I enjoy reading Kveller for a variety of reasons, one of them being my 90s obsession with Mayim Bialik, and others have to do with my obsession with motherhood. I’m a 32-year-old black, lesbian Jewish woman madly in love with an Ashkenazi Jewish woman from Texas. While we’re definitely not in the place where we’re making plans for children, it’s on our radar. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: biracial, ethnicity, Interfaith, Jewish diversity, lesbian, multiculturalism, race