A public lecture with author Yelena Lembersky sponsored by the Russian and Eastern European Studies Network (REES). Admission is free, all are welcome. Copies of Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour will be available for purchase. 

How to write about a home that you left as a child? To reach for the memories you have willed yourself to forget? Lembersky’s recent, highly acclaimed mother-and-daughter memoir traces the lives of her family as they try to leave the Soviet Union in the years preceding its collapse.

Told in the dual points of view of both Yelena and Galina (Yelena’s mother), Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour is a clear-eyed look at the reality of life under Communist rule, giving us an insider’s perspective on the roots of contemporary Russia. It is also a coming-of-age story, heartfelt, moving, and funny, a testament to the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters, and the healing power of art.

Yelena Lembersky is an author, an architect, and a project director at the Uniterra Foundation, promoting art and mutual understanding around the world. She has curated exhibitions and edited catalogues of her grandfather Felix Lembersky’s art. Her writing appeared in World Literature Today, Cardinal Points, and The Forward, and she was interviewed on National Public Radio, Radio Boston, and BBC.