Russians don’t speak highly of Brighton Beach, the enclave in Southern Brooklyn where I spent many of my formative years. The neighborhood’s critics disparage it with a degree of shame or superiority, or even irony, as was the case in my family. Moscow-born author Lara Vapnyar encapsulated this widespread sentiment when she titled her contribution…
Located on the main stretch of Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach Avenue, among numerous Russian delis, Russian-language bookstores and a shuttered Russian travel agency, the Brighton Neighborhood Association stands out. Its window is one of the few on the block with signs predominantly in English, and it’s one of the few storefronts near the elevated tracks of…
When “Russian Dolls,” the since canceled Lifetime reality show about a gaggle of Russian women living in Brighton Beach, premiered on the Lifetime Network, my Brighton friends and I gathered around a television to mark the occasion. What we were expecting was something akin to a Russiafied “Jersey Shore.” What we saw was, remarkably, much…
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