Customer Reviews

Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I rarely buy into the "so good you can't put it down" rhetoric when talking about books to read. Stephanie Griest's Around the Bloc is an exception. Reminiscent of my favorite, Bill Bryson, she has an amazing combination of detail, brilliant humor, and historical research that both teaches and entertains. This is a book that can profoundly change the way young people look at foreign travel or foreign study. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to study abroad as a guidebook for how to truly capture the essense of cultural immersion. Griest's re-discovery of her own culture through learning about others is an inspiring gem of a lesson.

Ay, caramba!

AROUND THE BLOC is more than a coming of age story, dear Readers.

The following is a laundry list of what you're genuinely missing when you ascribe such facile titles to this amazing little read:

1) The wonderful (and many) impactful lines of prose that emanate from the pen of someone so young, yet with so much on the ball (at the time of writing, that is -- the "young" part, not the "on the ball" part). Griest is possessed of an awareness that few individuals of mixed ethnicity and/or race choose to properly acknowledge. Inside the pages of this book, Elizondo Griest attacks this concept with a doggedness and reckless deliberation that's so downright inspirational! I would like to travel in her wake.

2) There were several passages which I came across where I just had to place the book down beside me to take a deep "resetting" breath. How author managed to touch so many sensitive chords within me, I'm positive the effect was similar on the others. Ms. Elizondo Griest doesn't hold punches. When she refers to things like love, lust, heartbreak, depression, devastation, and sex, she does **precisely** that. When Griest refers to how pained she was when the man who meant everything in her life dropped her for the second time (in as many chances), you hurt right along there with her. If you don't, you don't have much of a emotional bone within your body. Someone so outspoken and delightful doesn't deserve to get hurt like that. At least this was my initial reaction.

3) This is a young woman who has criss-crossed the world and back again, all in an attempt to seek the answers for the most essential life-donning questions which those of us who take such things for granted are never inclined to ask. Essential burning questions of indentity. Of the need and desire to understand who she really is at her core--not as a by-product of some consumerist collective--or where she really came from. By dipping into the collective unconsciousness of several nations of which she herself wasn't a descendant (Russia, China)...then beginning to relate these lessons to the things she knew and loved about herself (which came about more in Havana). Just gorgeous. In several spots the narrative, the author delivered up this story with a dramatist's expert flourish.

~~~~

The pages just turned. I never **once** felt a need to stop reading (the only time I had was because I'd been interupted by something other than the read).

Intentionally, I believe, Griest constructs the narrative with a rising crescendo. The story commences in Moscow, Russia and moves through Beijing, China. As the journey concludes in Havana, Cuba, in a country closest to her US home, Stephanie comes face to face with a daemon which has been dogging her for most of her early adult life.

When she least expects to find the answer which has been plaguing her mercilessly, as she describes it, it confronts her hard. It hammers her when she finds herself doing an activity which one might consider enough to pull her thoughts away from such critical existential questions. Dancing the rhumba, or talking with a couple of Cuban college students on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.

Rather than writing AROUND THE BLOC and ending things with a question mark, Elizondo Griest is even more convinced by the book's end about the righteousness of her choice of having travelled around the entire world, steadfast in her desire to want to know more about her essential self.

Like a highly sympathetic character in a novel or a film, you really want this person to succeed--dareisay win (?)--because the righteousness of her mission is just so important. It becomes as important to you as it initially is to Stephanie.

Haven't we all had such dilemmas in our life?

In this age of mixed identities, to be able to claim a purity of a connection to one's ancient or not-so-ancient culture is indeed a complicated decision, rife with paradoxes.

Even those who are "so-and-so"--how much of that "so-and-so" can they really be in the face of an environment which pulls them into defining themselves as something much more general than merely the binding specificity of one particular race or (former?) nation-state?

There are so many things which lay claim to our selves, at our cores. Griest cannot be blamed for having been sucked into this simplifying evening-out vortex, too. So deep has she been submerged into the commonality of the "Western experience," that it has become a compelling struggle to pull herself out. Like it is for others in her situation, who have written about things similarly.

It has been an honour and a privilege to follow her along her path. I can't thank her enough for having made me a part.

It's been to a gift to witness the changes, as she wrote about them, and as the book appears to be the culmination of many months and years of introspection and sometimes piercing self-doubt.

I've cherished each and every one of these pages. Thank you Stephanie.

If there ever were a sixth Amazonian star, it would go to Stephanie Elizondo Griest.

--ADM in Prague

I loved this book for many reasons, including the fact that it is as much a travelogue as it is a memoir (and a "Communist 101" history lesson)! Griest is funny and candid about her own initial misconceptions and cultural misshaps (her account of the Chinese lunch with her new colleagues is priceless!), but she still manages to bring her stories to life, avoiding caricatures and cliches.

Some of Griest's experiences resonated with me, like the challenges of settling into life in a foreign city. Although I have never traveled through China or Russia, her amazing gift for story-telling made the places and people in her book seem surprisingly familiar.

I highly recommend "Around the Bloc"!!! And I can't wait to see where she travels to next!

As someone who has always planned/thought/meant to travel and have lots of adventures of my own (but never actually had the means or time to travel), I can really appreciate all the detail and descriptions in Ms. Griest's Around the Bloc. I may not always agree with her conclusions, but I actually am grateful for them. I would so much rather hear opinions that cause me to think than feel affirmed or bored. It is almost as if she is an incredible, funny, and lively travel companion throughout this journey around the "Communist Bloc" and I get to hear her end-of-the-day assessment of her adventures and then begin to form my own. Her openness throughout the book about her experiences and mistakes help to endear and make her experiences much more "real" than a flat newspaper-style book. I have learned SO MUCH from this book about places that I will likely never visit and very much enjoyed having my eyes open to new perspectives on some very old issues.

This seems like a pretty good idea for a book: adventures of a twenty-something in three Communist capitals. Throw in the kicky title and a punchy attitude and it can't lose.

I enjoyed Griest's stories. Her writing style is light. I can understand the criticisms of one earlier reviewer here who thought Griest was too superficial and didn't learn anything. I'm not sure that's really the case, but Griest does keep her narrative in the moment, without spending too much time analyzing what it all meant. This makes for a smoother telling of the story.

Griest spends the most time in Moscow and knew years ahead of time that she would go to Russia someday. This section was not surprisingly the best part of the book. The part about Beijing was okay, in which Griest works for an English-language Chinese newspaper. She never fits in and is constantly reminded of the fact. Her journey to Havana is a spur-of-the-moment trip, and it is more fun than Beijing. She doesn't have to worry about upsetting the boss or embarrassing her friends. Even though she's there for only a short time, she falls in love. She also falls in love in Russia, but only after she has been there quite awhile. And she never gets close to having a serious relationship in Beijing.

Around the Bloc is a good first book. It isn't as good as Almost French by Sarah Turnbull, another book about a journalist who finds adventures halfway around the world. Although it's more revealing, somehow it isn't as personal. But I suspect that Griest will only get better and I look forward to more from her.

I lived in Asia (China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea) for the past 8 years as an American Elementary School Teacher. Around the Bloc is the most accurate attempt at explaining the emotion, trails, adventures, and growth that expats go through living overseas I have yet to find. I would highly recommend this book as "a coming of age book" along with those of Tania Aebi's and Jamie Zeppa. I didn't always agree with Stephanie Elizondo Griest's polictics or the conclusions that she came through, however I admire her for asking the questions and digging through the difficult that most expats ignore. It is a lot easier to travel and only see the glossy, simple face that these countries provide. It takes a lot of guts to really want to know the truth. This book is about the truth of China, Russia and Cuba. In addition, most travelogs are not very well written, this is a fine exception to that rule.

I could not put this book down. Her voice is refreshing and honest. I learned a lot about all of the places she lives in. I found the part about the censorship in China to be especially revealing.

This book energized me. Reading this book was almost as fun as traveling. I can't wait to visit Cuba. But this story is not just about travel. It's also about identity, family, language, and everything else important. Every traveller and every young woman must read this book. Keep your eye on this author! She's going to make it big. She's going to show us the world with fresh eyes.

Stephanie Griest grew up the model assimilated Latina in Corpus Christi, Texas, an idealistic high school activist and aspiring journalist who spoke no Spanish and maintained no connection to her Mexican roots. Fearful of being trapped in a stultifying life of strip malls and Taco Bell-hood, she longed to experience the sights and peoples of the world beyond. After enrolling in the school of journalism at the University of Texas, Ms. Griest embarked on a four-year odyssey that took her through the heart of the Communist world: first Moscow, then Beijing, and finally Havana. AROUND THE BLOC is her memoir of those experiences, a story about growing up and discovering one's own strengths and beliefs by using other lives, languages, and cultures as a mirror into her own life and her severed Mexican roots.

Ms. Griest begins her story in Moscow. Having been a student of Russian at the University of Texas (UT), she has moderate language facility in the country but no clue about the peoples and lifestyles she is about to experience during her study abroad. She arrived looking for the spirit of revolution, but what she found was the spirit of incipient and mostly lawless capitalism, a world in which the Russian Mafiosi were the dominant economic force and the locus of most private wealth. Mixing current events with stories of personal friendships and romantic relationships, Ms. Griest also draws a compelling and heartfelt portrait of life in late 1990s Russia as lived by its average citizens. We see their homes, taste their foods, and feel part of their family relationships.

After returning to UT, the author finagles a position via the Henry Luce Foundation as an English language copy editor for a Chinese government newspaper China Daily in Beijing. While her observations about Chinese life are perceptive and generally accurate, her position as an aspiring reporter and her minimal knowledge of Mandarin create a distance from her subject matter that would be less noticeable if it didn't follow so closely upon the human warmth and personal connectedness of her Moscow sojourn. Her Beijing stories take on the tinge of the reporter/tourist: seeing Mao Zedong's embalmed body at his tomb in Tiananmen Square, trying to understand the events of June 4, 1989 (the Tiananmen Square massacres), visiting museums and art galleries and gay bars. While she captures nicely at least some elements of Chinese life and culture, Ms. Griest rather misses the sense of revolutionary change taking place in the lives of average Chinese citizens. Here again, her writings about Moscow shine by comparison.

Finally, and unlawfully, Ms. Griest travels with a friend to Havana for a two-month underground excursion of Cuban life. By this time, the author is in danger of being little more than a cultural slummer, but she thankfully avoids that trap and manages to return to her Moscow form. Perhaps because she is not locked into the journalism mold that held her in check in Beijing, Ms. Griest's writing in Havana recaptures its freshness and spontaneity. As readers, we once again feel the people's lives - their struggles, their joys and sorrows, their foods and entertainments. Her Havana and its residents take on the sense of life and liveliness that seemed lacking in her Beijing and its people.

Not surprisingly, after all is said and done, Ms. Griest finds in herself a changed person. She is less committed to idealistic revolution and more committed to rediscovering her own Mexican roots - learning to speak Spanish and acknowledging her heritage rather than running from it. As is so often the case, one can only see one's own country, culture, and self clearly through the perspective gained by experiencing those same things in unfamiliar lands. Would that more Texans (such as Mr. Bush) and more Americans followed Ms. Griest's path to self-discovery. A little less xenophobia and America-centered hubris, and a little more cultural understanding and empathy, would stand this citizens and leaders of this country in good stead. Stephanie Griest's discovery that radicalism begins at home is a worthwhile lesson for us all.

This is more than just a travel book; it's the author's odyssey to search of her roots. Being half Mexican and half American, Stephanie struggles with her native culture. Instead of learning Spanish and exploring Mexico, she studies Russian, Chinese, and eventually travel to a lot of the Communist countries and submerge into foreign cultures. In the end, she realize in order to understand other cultures, one must accept his/her own root. It's a big round circle of journey.

I gauge how realistic Stephanie's account of Russia and Cuba by her description of the Chinese, since I know a great deal about China myself. I find what she said about the modern day Chinese funny and relatively accurate. Some exaggerations are there to make the stories more vivid and interesting, but it's not very far from the truth. (i.e. "Eating Tofu" in Chinese doesn't mean having oral sex. It means being taken advantage of sexually. But other Chinese phrases are very accurate.)

I highly recommend this book who wants to armchair-travel to these counties and learn about their modern day cultures.