Lea Zeltserman

*Updated – Check out the first issue of Soviet Samovar here. I spend a lot of my online time doing what most of us do – reading stuff, looking at stuff and sending stuff around. Savvy internet types have even wholescale co-opted the term curating from the dry, dusty bowels of museums to give all »Read More

It took the Kremlin until 1959 to realize how starved for things the nation was. In July of that year, Moscow’s Sokolniki Park hosted the American National Exhibition. …In just two week two million Russians had had their faces mashed into a perfect tableau of Yankee wealth. The Cadillacs, the TV dinners, the cosmetics, the »Read More

Surprisingly to some, many of the people living in places like Peel or Scarborough do so voluntarily—almost as if they like it or something. Moreover, a very significant chunk of those suburbanites aren’t white and weren’t born in Canada, a fact that raises some rather sticky questions. To wit, as downtown scenesters badmouth the suburbs »Read More

If I had a Russian food blog, it would be something like The Gastronomical Me, by Katrina K., a transplanted Russian who lives in London. And, if I loved in London, I would be crashing her monthly Soviet brunch club. As it is, I may have to start my own version in Toronto. In the »Read More

This next post is from Navneet Alang, a tech-culture writer and PhD student. You can catch his always thoughtful commentary in This Magazine and the Toronto Standard, among others. Nav’s memorable item is slightly bigger than your average tchotchke, but what I really appreciate is how neatly it upends expectations of what, or where, home »Read More

Our next submission on the things we take with us growing up in immigrant homes is from writer Scaachi Koul, who writes about her distance from her Indian background. Scaachi is currently interning over at Huffington Post Canada. She also keeps a personal blog, Big Fists, where she’s recently started an advice column featuring her »Read More

Today’s peek into the immigrant home comes from Anna Tarkov, a journalist and blogger from Chicago. She’s been published in the Chicago Tribune, Time Out Chicago, and others, and her blog, THE OUTSIDER… and the rueful dilettante, is full of insights on the state of journalism today. Though she left the USSR much later than »Read More

A couple weeks ago I asked for people to send in their stories about immigrant household decor, an extension of my own musings on the question of whether what’s on your walls impacts your immigrant identity. I got some great responses, and I’m excited to be sharing them over the coming days! Today’s contribution is »Read More

Did you grow up in an immigrant family (Russian/Soviet or otherwise)? Was every available inch taken up with mementos of the “Old Country”? Or did your family shun any and all reminders? Or maybe it was you who made the journey to a new language, new food, new home and had to decide what to »Read More