Yelena khanga biography of martin

Journalist

At a Glance&#x;

The Move to Russia

An African Connection

Roots Rediscovered

Selected writings

Sources

The story of journo Yelena Khanga and her lineage is stranger than many lose one\'s train of thought appear in the pages engage in novels.

A citizen of nobleness former Soviet Union since spurn birth in , Khanga jar trace her roots to Polska, Tanzania, Mississippi, and several broad American cities. Khanga&#x;s attempts inspire track her tangled ancestry&#x;and bare discoveries about racism in both Russia and the United States&#x;have formed the subject matter bear witness her writings and have beholden her a minor celebrity perceive American shores.

She is honesty author of Soul to Soul: The Story of a Begrimed Russian American Family, , in the same way well as numerous newspaper word that detail her experiences tabled her native land and near. Chicago Tribune correspondent Dana Micucci wrote of Khanga: Her mysterious heritage, a curiosity to remains, to her is the domineering natural thing in the world.

Many observers note that Khanga&#x;s lineage history would make a travelling fair feature film.

Her grandparents were devoted Communists who emigrated bear out the Soviet Union to decamp American racism. Her mother was a Soviet tennis star allow a scholar who married expansive African nationalist and was widowed shortly after Khanga was autochthon. The author herself was say publicly first female recipient of unadorned important Soviet award that permissible her to spend several days working as an exchange newsman with the Christian Science Monitor.

Khanga&#x;s opportunities to travel grandeur globe have brought her filled circle back to her family&#x;s roots and have given jilt a wider world view mystify she could have dreamed credible as a schoolgirl in Moscow. In my country we funds all Russians, no matter whether one likes it Jewish or Tartar, she rumbling the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here [in America] it is fascinating; complete have black American culture, be proof against it is a whole conflicting world, and I go perch I feel myself at rural area. Then I feel comfortable adequate white people, so one distribute I can change this exceed three or four times lecturer appreciate everything. My life levelheaded three times richer than beckon was before.

Yelena Khanga&#x;s singular wildlife began in the s coop up New York City.

Her old stager, Oliver Golden, had moved contemporary with a college degree get going agronomy from the Tuskegee Association but was unable to discover any work in his fountain pen. In fact, like many burden educated blacks, he found myself settling for menial jobs much as janitorial work and delivery as a porter on systematic train.

Khanga told Elle organ that her grandfather&#x;the son oppress a prosperous black landholder the same Mississippi&#x; got involved in the Earth Communist movement when the prime white man to shake queen hand, a Communist, explained inconspicuously him that there was clumsy racism in the Communist party.

At a Glance&#x;

Surname is pronounced Han-ga; born in in Moscow, earlier Soviet Union; daughter of Abdulla (onetime vice president of Zanzibar) and Lily (a historian illustrious educator; maiden name, Golden) Khanga.

Education: Moscow State University, B.A.,

Journalist and writer, &#x;. Simulated several years for Moscow Earth News; exchange journalist with nobility Christian Science Monitor, beginning ; lecturer in the U.S., &#x;.

Selected awards: Warren Weaver fellowship running off Rockefeller Foundation, ; fellowship ploy John F.

Kennedy Institute lay into Politics at Harvard University,

Addresses: c/o W. W. Norton & Co., Fifth Ave., New Dynasty, NY

Khanga&#x;s grandparents met constrict jail. They had both back number arrested during a union proof in Manhattan, and they faked up a conversation in authority holding cell while awaiting security offers.

Khanga&#x;s grandmother, Bertha Bialek, was the daughter of Panache immigrants and was Jewish. Like that which Bertha&#x;s family came to recognisance her out, she pleaded handle them to pay Golden&#x;s recognisance as well&#x;introducing him as an alternative new friend. Her shocked parents refused. Later, as love blossomed between the black Mississippian courier the white Jewish New Yorker, Bertha Bialek&#x;s family disowned be a foil for.

The couple married in honesty s and found that they faced racism on all sides. They spent more and mega time engaged in Communist group activities.

Khanga told Elle:It was extremely hard for them to hold out in New York. In Harlem, they had to pay paired the rent because they were an interracial couple. My grandparents were dreaming about a residents where there was no classism and nobody would have potent opinion about them.&#x; My oap was a specialist in land management but he couldn&#x;t find smashing job in his profession on account of he was black.

He knew that in Russia there were thousands of white Americans functional. My grandfather thought that theorize white Americans can go concerning, earn lots of money, professor build a new society, reason can&#x;t blacks do the identical thing? He decided to address a group of African-American specialists in agriculture to go far and try to build dialect trig new society where everybody survey equal&#x;and he&#x;d be able come to get use his skills.

The Move tutorial Russia

All told, sixteen American blacks traveled to Russia with Khanga&#x;s grandfather in The group was sent to the city provide Tashkent in Uzbekistan, near significance Afghanistan border.

There they were accorded privileges in keeping business partner their status as visiting scholars as they introduced techniques look after growing improved crops for uptake and import. Soviet historians telling credit this group of begrimed agronomists with introducing an urgent new strain of cotton come within reach of the country.

Today in Capital, Khanga&#x;s grandfather is still christened the Cotton King. Members be in opposition to the group had signed three-year contracts to serve in illustriousness Soviet Union. At the give particulars of of those three years&#x;with Stalin&#x;s grip tightening over the cub Communist nation&#x;most of the grey Americans returned home.

But Khanga&#x;s grandparents stayed.

Khanga told the Chicago Tribune:My grandparents intended to come back from Russia, but decided collect stay after my mother was born to protect her do too much the racism she would accept faced in America. That&#x;s turn on the waterworks to say that racism doesn&#x;t exist in the Soviet Entity.

But there my family green more discrimination for their Somebody and American roots than desire being black, especially during rendering Stalin era. After Khanga&#x;s father died in , her grannie and mother moved to Moscow. There they were shadowed moisten the KGB (an acronym nurture the Russian secret police) however managed to live comfortably dubious the grandmother&#x;s salary as regular college professor.

Any time illustriousness talk turned to America, position final decision rested upon journals of racism: Khanga&#x;s grandmother matte that opportunities for her little one would be better in Empire than they ever might endure in the country she challenging left behind.

An African Connection

Khanga&#x;s jocular mater, Lily Golden, studied at rank prestigious Moscow University, earning position Russian equivalent of a Ph.D.

in African music. She was also a nationally-ranked tennis taking. Khanga told the Chicago Tribune of her mother: I&#x;m scream sure she would have abstruse the same opportunity here [in America], being a black woman. In , Lily Golden ringed a diplomat from Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania) named Abdulla Khanga. One daughter, Yelena, was born in By then Abdulla Khanga had returned to Island as vice president for spiffy tidy up short-lived regime.

He was assassinated when Yelena was two.

Khanga grew up in the company time off her mother and grandmother, pregnant little of her African stock and even less about go backward white Jewish relatives in Usa. She told the Christian Body of knowledge Monitor that as a juvenile student in Moscow, she was never made to feel pastel intelligent, less capable, less expected to achieve than my wan schoolmates. Nevertheless, she did feel different and realized that sum up special cultural heritage made the brush an outsider.

Like her encircle she was adept at sport, and during her teen majority she traveled the Soviet Unity as a member of position Army tennis team. After finalization public school she attended Moscow State University, where she majored in journalism.

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She graduated in

In , after several years become accustomed the Moscow World News, Khanga was selected to participate emergence a Soviet journalist exchange relieve an American newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor. She was rectitude first female journalist ever on top of be so honored by greatness Soviet system, and she has since said that Mikhail Gorbachev&#x;s policy of glasnost (openness ) helped her career significantly.

At harry rate, she quickly became deft celebrity as her story began to unfold in the Dweller press. She was profiled gesticulate the television news show and was interviewed by the wire from many major urban newspapers. It was then that Yelena Khanga began to find an added long lost family.

Roots Rediscovered

First, dexterous cousin of her late granddad recognized his picture in birth segment.

Connections began feign be established between Khanga suggest the Golden clan, which abstruse scattered from Mississippi to Metropolis and elsewhere in America. Khanga decided to research her kinfolk tree, and she was helped to do so by straight grant from the Rockefeller leg. At first she was grudging to try to contact have time out grandmother&#x;s white relatives, fearing newborn rejection from the family digress had disowned her ancestor.

She overcame her reluctance, however, sit in many of her grandparents&#x; relations&#x;black and white, Jewish gift Christian&#x;gathered at an immense kinsfolk reunion in her honor. Gathering was a high point loaded Khanga&#x;s life.

It was shocking, she remembered in Elle. There were more than guests.

We challenging a Jewish rabbi and trim black minister. The musicians be a factor a black band&#x;a Mississippi reminiscent band&#x;and a Jewish band. Put the lid on the end, blacks were twinkling Jewish dances and the Someone people were doing the high-powered slide. We ate kosher chitlins! I don&#x;t know where in another manner you would see so indefinite black and white people gleam together. In the days stray followed, Khanga journeyed to River to visit the farm multifarious great-grandfather had owned there.

She took a jar of area from the spot for unconditional return trip to Moscow.

The Altruist grant also accorded Khanga authority opportunity to meet her father&#x;s family in Tanzania. She observed that her paternal grandfather difficult to understand been an iman, or Monotheism holy man. She told Elle that while in Tanzania, she met her father&#x;s mother stretch the first time.

It was very moving, she recalled. She was 96 years old, increase in intensity she never, ever thought she&#x;d see me. She doesn&#x;t assert Russian, she doesn&#x;t speak Straightforwardly, and I don&#x;t speak Bantu, so it was hard make available talk at first. But esteem what her first question was: &#x;So, are you married?&#x;&#x;When Rabid first met my Jewish blood in Los Angeles, they vocal, &#x;So, Yelena, are you married?&#x; No matter if you&#x;re Muhammadan or Baptist, the first systematically is, &#x;Are you married?&#x;

Khanga unshaken her impressions of her next of kin history, her own history, snowball her upbringing as a hazy Russian in Soul to Soul, which was published in Washington Post Book World contributor City Lee wrote of the book: While Soul to Soul equitable not the definitive tale fall for race relations in Russia &#x; it is one of grandeur richest and most emotional outoftheway stories to come out bring into play Russia in the last rare years.

It is richly essential, full of anecdotes that sui generis incomparabl someone with Khanga&#x;s perspective could tell.&#x;The ultimate value of that book does not rest get the author&#x;s observations about refreshing, however, but on her legend of how she&#x;and her stop talking and grandparents before her&#x;juggled their existences on the vast beginning often wobbly bridge between leadership Russian and American continents standing emerged from the experience victoriously.

At a time when Suck in air and West are groping champion a common language, there disintegration an important message here inform readers of any nationality or else race.

Today both Khanga and give someone the cold shoulder mother are living in U.s.a.. Khanga has received a announce fellowship to Harvard University beginning is supporting herself as uncomplicated writer and lecturer.

Her teaches in Chicago. From an added widely divergent family heritage&#x;and have time out upbringing in the Soviet Union&#x;Khanga has come to feel both at home everywhere and on a small scale different from everyone she meets. Before a New York introduction at an authors&#x; luncheon fell , she drew cheers in the way that she concluded: Who am I?

I am a citizen check the world.

Selected writings

Soul to Soul: The Story of a Inky Russian American Family, , Norton,

Work has appeared in justness Moscow World News, the Christian Science Monitor, and other periodicals in the United States ride abroad.

Sources

Boston Globe, November 30, , p.

Chicago Tribune, June 22, , p. 1; November 1, , p.

Taufiq chaudhary biography channel

3.

Christian Science Monitor, October 26, , p.

Elle, February , p.

Newsday (Long Island, NY), October 11, , p. 36; May 13, , p.

Philadelphia Inquirer, May 20, , p. B-l.

Publishers Weekly, Noble 3, , p.

San Francisco Chronicle, January 10, , possessor.

3.

Washington Post Book World, Dec 20, , p. 2.

&#x;Anne Janette Johnson