The Naked World By Irina Mashinski

"The Naked World defies neat categorization as a powerful memoir that combines both prose and poetry in its witness to … a Russian émigrée whose four generations of Jewish relatives survived “The Great Terror” of Stalin’s genocide.… In a hybrid of interwoven reminiscences and lyrical poems, Mashinski witnesses to her sense of herself as a “double pariah,” that is, as a Jew who … exists also “as a stateless person with a so-called Nansen passport, stripped naked of national and cultural identity in the new world of her hosts.” … The Naked World represents Mashinski’s decades-long effort to “create her own destiny” … By finding enduring, literary expression that recounts the details of her remarkable journey…, Mashinski redefines American citizenship from a fresh perspective.…"

— Chard deNiord