This is the picture of 2009 taken in Cambria, California, USA (in my biography it is called "Sproesser marriage" or "Sproesser marriage period" that obviously lasted 6 years and brought unnecessary confusion to my last name.
The two pictures of the books are of the last two editions of my very first Russian book that I call "Moya mnogostradalnaya devushka" (моя многострадальная девушка) - My Girl that Has Suffered. "Suffering" refers to the book's 4 editions that have been treated not very nicely. It is a long story "why", and one day it will go out in its naked truthfulness. Today, on September 12, 2020, I will just say that the truth about my 2004-Moscow edition, the 1st edition, will come out after a certain event happens. The truth about the 2nd edition of 2010 will come out if some circumstances change. The two editions that are in the picture here - are the same book, but the blue one is available mostly for Europe and Russia. They will send it to you to USA, maybe, but it may be quite costly. I ordered my own few author's copies and it was not very cheap. On the bright side - the book is very well made by Russian publishers in Ekaterinburg. It is a very beautiful, nicely made edition.
https://ridero.ru/books/devushka_iz_shtata_kaliforniya/
The purple edition of 2020 with English covers is available in USA at barnesandnoble.com if to enter Zoia Eliseyeva in their book search. I have never ordered my author's copy so I cannot attest to how the book is made.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-girl-from-california-zoia-eliseyeva/1137412781?ean=9781663533098
I have 3 different editions sample books at home, and the long story of this book's publishing currently is put to rest by me. The 2004-Moscow edition is present, as a little picture that you can see here on the 2020-edition (light purple), on the front cover. The picture on it is of me, described in Chapter 4 of the book where I tell a story about the wedding of my Russian female friend of those years (1990-ties, California, USA). I was the only bridesmaid on that wedding, so the picture shows my peach-color bridesmaid's dress that can be mistakenly confused with the bride's dress by people who do not know the details. So I heard from Moscow after my 2004 edition came out "They don't like you because they think that you are happily married in USA, and that you betrayed your own country". None of this applies to me, except "happiness" to some extent that visited me just by random chance - as it does everybody else. I was calmly married to Burkhart for 9 years, and so the author of that edition is Zoia Burkhart. The dress is not a wedding dress, and the dress was paid by the bride's family by American tradition. No, I did not make them broke with that dress. I bought it for a bargain price. The dress was too big, and I made it smaller by myself, by hand.
Another part, more political, than a dress, about "betrayed". Who betrayed whom? I my country, or my country betrayed me? Seems like the second part of the statement is correct. The answer is simple. I am Russian person who was born during Soviet Union in one of the former soviet socialist republics, in the capital city of that republic. After break-up of the Soviet Union in 1989-1990 that republic denied citizenship to all Russian people who were born there after 1940 (the latter were so few, so we even did not know who they were). Tens of thousands, probably, rather hundreds of thousands of Russian people in one day became "residents" of the country where they were born. I learned it when I opened my passport in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, where we (my future husband and I) came to get married after three weeks of my arrival to California, USA (May 1995). All of this is described in this book - all these unexpected events that happened to me then.
I studied English from my childhood, thanks to my mother who placed me into specialized school with enhanced English language that was quite far from our apartment. I, a 10-year-old girl, had to take two trolleybuses to reach the far part of the city - for 7 years. At the age of 16 I graduated from a high school (by American expression, since we used to call it "secondary school" средняя школа). Then I worked 3 years in the state library in the city downtown. I tried to start a university course a few times. Once, in Ukraine, I was not successful enough in my entrance passing examinations, and I suddenly had an important letter from my future first husband calling me back to my city, so I came back. When you are 17 or 18 these kinds of letters are very important, and a person would rush from one place to another just to get that accomplished. Second time, when I was about 19, I actually successfully started the university program in my city, however this time I found the major "Library Science" to be very boring, in spite of the fact that I had spent many hours in a local library in my childhood; so, I quit after one year or so. Actually, I remember that I also studied a little bit in the major "Russian and Literature". The third time I took a year of special preparation studies for entrance examinations. There were usually from 3 to 6 people on one available spot to get into the English major Bachelor's program - it was a free of charge competition of person's school achievements/knowledge. After that year I passed all four exams, and I started my favorite English and Literature major course. I went to the night department, so it was for 6 years. The day department had more hours and they made it in 5 years. The night department were students who worked the full 8-hour working day, and in the evening, 3-4 times a week we went to the university. We were about 8 or 9 people in the group, and I describe that, partially, in my Russian story "Lizka i Aliska". Even it is a partial description, but it gives a perfect picture of the atmosphere that we breathed then in our English major of the late Soviet 1980-ties. The other drop of the description of that group is in my early story "Novie russkie rugayut Ameriku, a starie russkie zaschischayut". That story actually is in the end of my "suffered girl" book, and it has a bit of a description of one young man who was a student of our group. He became in post-Soviet time what we called "a new Russian", so I described the type.
This story needs to be continued.
I am grateful to all those who will stop here to read it, since some facts here I just have written for the first time, and it makes me feel happy, that some more memories are put on paper, so to say. And in English! My Russian gets neglected here, and I even get punished for it, so now we know better why my first book is called by me "suffering/suffered".
Zoia Eliseyeva
September 12, 2020
California, USA
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