Around the Bloc; My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana
New York: Villard, 2004. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. 399 pages Some cover wear. Sticker residue on front cover. Includes Author's Note; Prologue: Red Star over South Texas. Section One covers Moscow; Section Two covers Beijing; Section Three covers Havana. Inscribed by the author on the half title page. Epilogue: Seeing Red. Notes. Acknowledgments. Index. Inscription reads: For my beautiful Ned, A Rumba Dancin' Queen, without whom these stories could never have been told. You've been my backbone these past 3 years--muchisimes gracias for your incredible support & friendship. All my [heart symbol] and Begos, Stephanie [star symbol]. Stephanie Elizondo Griest (born June 6, 1974) is a Chicana author and activist from South Texas. Her books include Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, and Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and others. She earned a degree in journalism. Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, Griest began speaking about wanting to travel in her high school years. She traveled to Moscow while learning Russian, creating a rulebook for traveling across Russia. She has added to Chicano studies by her form of travel writing, exploring how Mexican culture can be affected in a border region. She has made relevant contributions as she grew up in American culture in Texas, resulting in being heavily influenced by Mexican culture. Specifically, this influence came from family and friends who resisted assimilation of the Mexican culture.
Over her career, Griest has explored 29 countries. On one occasion, she spent a year driving 45,000 miles across the United States, documenting its history for a youth-oriented website called The Odyssey. A 2005 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, she is currently a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute and a Board Member of the National Coalition Against Censorship. She won the 2007 Richard Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting for her work on Mexico. Desperate to escape South Texas, Stephanie Griest dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. So she headed to Russia looking for some excitement, commencing what would become a four year, twelve-nation Communist bloc tour that shattered her preconceived notions of the "Evil Empire." In this book, she relates her experiences as a volunteer at a children's shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the office of the Chinese Communist Party's English-language mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She falls in love with an ex-soldier who narrowly avoided radiation cleanup duties at Chernobyl, hangs out with Cuban hip-hop artists, and comes to difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy. This is the absorbing story of a young journalist driven by a desire to witness the effects of Communism. Along the way, she learns the Russian mathematical equation for buying dinner-party vodka (one bottle per guest, plus an extra), stumbles upon Beijing's underground gay scene, marches with 100,000 mothers demanding Elian Gonzalez's return to Cuba, and gains a new appreciation for the Mexican culture she left behind. Derived from a Kirkus review: A coming-of-age story from a young Latina journalist who recounts her stays in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, circa 1996 to 2000. You need permits and papers in Russia, and the bureaucracy still creaks with inefficiency; democracy is a long way off, the revolution is dead, and war and corruption are in. In Beijing, where she toils for the English-language propaganda sheet, journalism is all about not offending your friends, not recognizing your enemies, and steering clear of the sensitive. Cuba, too, gets a standard-issue treatment: “Revolutionaries might be genius military strategists, but they are crummy economists,” conveniently forgetting the embargo. So the value of all this comes down to Griest getting off the beaten track, which she does often enough to keep the pages turning: working in a shelter for children in Moscow to taste the downside of vodka; learning to shrug off fiercely held convictions to get into the stomach of the Chinese via the food bond; and dancing in Cuba. The energy she puts into these pursuits opens her mind and drives her story. Here, she can avoid received opinion because she is creating her own, tossing aside “the anvil of history,” and slipping on a new pair of cultural spectacles, letting her doubts and newfound notions rise to the surface. Griest gets out and about and drinks in some cultural relativism rather than assuming the omniscient cloak of the foreign correspondent. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Journalists, Communism, Russia, China, Cuba, Balakhna, Moscow, Democracy, Cooking, Dancing, Uighur, Rumba, Revolutionaries, Social Conditions
ISBN: 0812967607
[Book #80897]
Price: $50.00