Mother Winter: A Memoir

  • Author: Sophia Shalmiyev
  • Narrator: Sophia Shalmiyev
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Duration: 5:38:17
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Synopsis

"Lyrical and emotionally gutting." —O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
“Intellectually satisfying [and] artistically profound.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)
“Mesmeric.”—THE PARIS REVIEW
“Vividly awesome and truly great." —EILEEN MYLES
“Gorgeous, gutting, unforgettable." —LENI ZUMAS
“Brilliant.” —MICHELLE TEA

An arresting memoir equal parts refugee-coming-of-age story, feminist manifesto, and meditation on motherhood, displacement, gender politics, and art that follows award-winning writer Sophia Shalmiyev’s flight from the Soviet Union, where she was forced to abandon her estranged mother, and her subsequent quest to find her.

Russian sentences begin backward, Sophia Shalmiyev tells us on the first page of her striking lyrical memoir. To understand the end of her story, we must go back to the beginning.

Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev was raised in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), where anti-Semitism and an imbalance of power were omnipresent in her home. At just eleven years old, Shalmiyev’s father stole her away to America, forever abandoning her estranged alcoholic mother, Elena. Motherless on a tumultuous voyage to the states, terrified in a strange new land, Shalmiyev depicts in urgent, poetic vignettes her emotional journeys through an uncharted world as an immigrant, artist, and, eventually, as a mother of two. As an adult, Shalmiyev voyages back to Russia to search endlessly for the mother she never knew—in her pursuit, we witness an arresting, impassioned meditation on art-making, gender politics, displacement, and most potently, motherhood.

Chapters

  • 001 MotherWinter Open

    Duration: 35s
  • 002 MotherWinter Dedication

    Duration: 11s
  • 003 MotherWinter Epigraph

    Duration: 18s
  • 004 MotherWinter Chapter1

    Duration: 04min
  • 005 MotherWinter Chapter2

    Duration: 04min
  • 006 MotherWinter Chapter3

    Duration: 11min
  • 007 MotherWinter Chapter4

    Duration: 03min
  • 008 MotherWinter Chapter5

    Duration: 08min
  • 009 MotherWinter Chapter6

    Duration: 08min
  • 010 MotherWinter Chapter7

    Duration: 05min
  • 011 MotherWinter Chapter8

    Duration: 07min
  • 012 MotherWinter Chapter9

    Duration: 06min
  • 013 MotherWinter Chapter10

    Duration: 05min
  • 014 MotherWinter Chapter11

    Duration: 04min
  • 015 MotherWinter Chapter12

    Duration: 07min
  • 016 MotherWinter Chapter13

    Duration: 06min
  • 017 MotherWinter Chapter14

    Duration: 04min
  • 018 MotherWinter Chapter15

    Duration: 09min
  • 019 MotherWinter Chapter16

    Duration: 08min
  • 020 MotherWinter Chapter17

    Duration: 04min
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