Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times:
In 1990, when Julia Ioffe was 7 years old, her family left a collapsing Soviet Union for suburban Maryland. Her new classmates never let her forget that she was the “weird Russian girl,” but the disdain, she makes clear, was mutual. Growing up, she looked down on American kids who bragged about seeing a Broadway musical or vacationing in Florida. Ioffe’s idea of a good time was going to the opera and reading Pushkin.
She came by her snobbery honestly. Her family was filled with strong, educated women. Ioffe’s mother was an otolaryngologist turned pathologist; her mother’s mother was a cardiologist; her mother’s mother’s mother was a pediatrician. Another great-grandmother was a chemist who ran her own lab in the 1930s; Ioffe’s paternal grandmother was a chemical engineer who ensured the safety of the Kremlin’s drinking water.
More here.
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