growing up in the Soviet Union

A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir . . . could be taught as a master class in memoir writing," says reviewer Elena Lappin in the Feb. 7 NY Times book review section. One can't get a better recommendation.
I listened to a reading from the book by the author, Russian immigrant Elena Gorokhova last week at the University of Vermont. Elena's writing was poetic and her reading of various passages was delightful. The book describes growing up in Leningrad in the 1950s and 60s, dealing with so many aspects of a repressive society and falling in love with the English language which led eventually to Elena's emigrating.