[Jason] Eskenazi found few restrictions in those early days. He traveled thousands of miles, through seven time zones and entered factories and prisons in Siberia. Though he didn't speak Russian initially, he quickly learned the words for, "Where is the wedding?" or "Where is the funeral?" so he could enter into ritual and community life. In one photo, a milkmaid with mud-stained shoes in Kazakhstan looks out dreamily as she milks a cow. The next photo features a young woman of similar features and age, but well dressed and dancing with a young man at a waltz competition. It's almost as if the first picture is dreaming the second. At another point in the book, a woman jumps up in a park. She almost seems in flight, like the dreams of space flight that many people associate with the Soviet Union. But the next picture is totally ironic: A woman is dusting off a stuffed dog in a museum. It is, in fact, one of the dogs that went into space.
[Jason] Eskenazi found few restrictions in those early days. He traveled thousands of miles, through seven time zones and entered factories and prisons in Siberia. Though he didn't speak Russian initially, he quickly learned the words for, "Where is the wedding?" or "Where is the funeral?" so he could enter into ritual and community life.
In one photo, a milkmaid with mud-stained shoes in Kazakhstan looks out dreamily as she milks a cow. The next photo features a young woman of similar features and age, but well dressed and dancing with a young man at a waltz competition. It's almost as if the first picture is dreaming the second.
At another point in the book, a woman jumps up in a park. She almost seems in flight, like the dreams of space flight that many people associate with the Soviet Union. But the next picture is totally ironic: A woman is dusting off a stuffed dog in a museum. It is, in fact, one of the dogs that went into space.
