The Following article occurs with permission of Tough Drum Magazine
Kirsten Koza's Lost In Moscow is ethnographical. It depicts the culture of
an eleven-year-old girl and, through her lens, it naively depicts Russian
communist culture in 1977. Koza presents a uniquely vivid, personal memoir
of her travels to summer camp in Russia as an adolescent. A small town
girl from Cheltenham, Ontario, Kirsten reluctantly explores Russian
culture with little acceptance or approval, however, it is clear that this
experience has changed her life.
For the reader, Koza's book is a perfect venue to step back in time and
reflect on an abandoned culture and political era. Her use of language
invites the reader to come along with her on her travels from the moment
that her parents drop her off at the airport and, through her eyes, we
experience the U.S.S.R. with an innocent, childish spin. Her descriptions
do not leave the reader wondering about the finer details and differences
between former Canadian and Russian cultures. From sharing a single glass
at the pop machine to low-riding toilets with stirrups, Koza openly shares
her most intimate experiences with people and places in the former Soviet
Union.
Kirsten is hesitant to accept the differences of others and, throughout
the book, there is an impending fear of "being caught" by the Red Army.
Nevertheless, Kirsten tests the limits and dives into a world of
confrontations and challenges where perseverance is at the heart of a
summer experience to be remembered, preserved and shared.
Tough Drum: Briefly describe the book?
Kirsten Koza: When I was eleven-years-old my parents sent me to summer
camp in the USSR, for the entire summer, no phoning home. I wasn't
forbidden to phone home but in 1977 one couldn't just pick up a phone from
behind the Iron Curtain and call the West. My parents weren't communists
and I had no family in Russia. My folks were just young and thought four
hundred dollars for a whole summer sounded like a good deal. It was my
rebellious English grandma who was the "Red". She was the one who signed
me up and delivered the news to my parents that I'd been selected by the
Soviet government along with a small group of Canadian children from
across Canada to make this journey. And we did. The book is about our
exploits that summer in the USSR...being chased by the Red Army until
being entirely lost in Moscow and
not even knowing the name of the hotel, parachuting at camp without
permission or lessons or equipment that fit, cosmonaut training, vodka and
being radiated for tonsillitis. It's told through my wild-child eyes but
it's not a book for children due to certain subject matter (sex) and
content (swearing). Or in other words...the book is about what real kids
do, but is not what real kids are allowed to read. It's a true story but
reads like fiction.
TD: What path have you taken in becoming a writer?
KK: Being a writer was the first thing I ever wanted to be. But during my
public school years I was told that this was truly an impossible dream and
I abandoned the whole crazy notion. Instead I went into
theatre...Bizarrely, no one discouraged me this time. I studied acting at
Dalhousie University and later went on to do my post grad in theatre in
London England at East 15. Theatre training and working for years in that
profession gave me fabulous tools for writing. How did I end up on the
actual path to writing a book though, a book, which has nothing to do with
the theatre…well it was an accident. It took a sequence of events; my car
being stolen from a service bay during an oil change, my passport and
papers were in the glove box, I lost a job overseas, my parents decided to
move to France and my mom delivered a big box of my childhood to me.
Inside the box was my diary and scrapbook full of photos from my summer in
the USSR. I’m not even sure why I sat down at the computer and started
writing. But at page 75, not even out of Moscow and at the summer camp on
the Black Sea, I realized I had a book.
TD: How did you revive the memories of this trip in order to write this
story?
KK: My mother was "the" enforcer of record keeping. So I kept a daily
diary, never missing a date that summer. I had my little camera that we
got when we subscribed to Time and when I got home I made my scrapbook
gluing in every photo, chocolate bar wrapper and pop label that I’d
stashed away and I
captioned each. But beyond the material that had been stowed away all
those years in my parents’ house—every day was a huge deal in the USSR. It
was an entire summer of days that were equivalent to one’s most vivid
childhood moment. Of course, I’m also one of those horrible people that
can quote something someone said ten years ago, word for word.
TD: What aspects of Russian culture stand out in your mind the most today?
KK: The toilets. No, well, are toilets a part of a culture? They must be.
And when you lined up in a public washroom in Moscow, you looked into the
eyes of the person going to the toilet. They were the toiletless-toilets,
where you stood on two foot-pads and the doors only covered the person’s
body not their face. If you were using the facility you looked into the
eyes of the people in line. That’s a different culture that does that.
It’s a different society. A different perception of privacy and a
different perception of what makes something private. You gazed into the
eyes of someone having a bowel movement but chewing gum was illegal.
TD: How long did you work at this book?
KK: It took a year to write. And another half-year to fine-tune it at the
same time as wondering what to do next…how was I to find a publisher? I
bought a couple "how-to" books on the subject of finding a publisher and
followed their advice. But then…I was reading Kabloona in the Yellow
Kayak, a non-fiction tale about a Grandma who paddles across the entire
artic. I kept looking at the cover and thinking, “Wow, what a great
cover”. Then one night I sat up in bed as the light bulb finally went
off—"Send your book
to Turnstone Press because you love what they’ve done with Kabloona". I
went online and checked them out, then followed their submission
guidelines to the tee. I didn’t want a page too many or a font too small
blowing this for me.
TD: How is your book tour going?
KK: It’s exhausting. My publishing house has been brilliantly supportive.
They’ve flown me to the East Coast; next they’re sending me West. They’ve
held the launches at the very best bookstores in our country. I’ve been
talking at schools and Universities. It never ends you know. Just because
it has been published and it is in the stores and all over the Internet
internationally—the author doesn’t just get to sit back. I’ve almost
finished my second book and I mean almost but this last month of readings
and signings has definitely slowed the progress down. I’m not worried
though. It’s non-fiction humorous adventure travel again. I don’t have the
difficult task of a fiction writer—I know where my story has to go,
because it’s true. And I know that on June 27 at 2:00 PM I’m going to be
standing there at Canada’s BookExpo in the Metro Toronto Convention
Centre, at the Turnstone booth, feeling like I did the first day I sent
out my manuscript.
