Ericka Johnson. Dreaming of a Mail-Order Husband: Russian-American Internet Romance. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007. 193 pp. Notes. Bibliography. $21.95, paper.
While this study of Russian women seeking American “mail-order” spouses is written with the best of intentions, it fails to provide a realistic picture of today’s cross-cultural “marriage market”. Through interviews conducted with six Russian women in Russia and seven men and women in the US, Ericka Johnson, a researcher on medical education at Sweden’s Linkoping University, attempts to describe the situation of young Russian women seeking American spouses via Internet dating agencies. The lives of the Russian respondents provide a springboard for discussion of the reasons prompting these women to seek a spouse abroad and of issues of adaptation to American life.
Though the author’s lively style reads well, social science and feminist jargon sometimes strike a jarring note, as when she offers that, “Whiteness is, however, constructed and very contextual”. Ms. Johnson’s attempt to “problematize” the “discursive framework” is marred by major methodological shortcomings and by a lack of familiarity with the literature on this subject and, more importantly, with Russian language, history and culture. That the interviews were conducted entirely in English puts Ms. Johnson at a clear disadvantage in dealing with the highly intimate issues involved, and the very small number of respondents makes her generalizations open to question. The author acknowledges that, for some women, “I have created their personae based on composites of several different interviews” , casting further doubt on the reliability of the respondents’ statements. Although geographical location is a vitally important indicator for analyzing the ethnic origins, education, professions and views of Russian citizens, the reader is merely informed that the interviews were conducted in an unnamed “little city”. And since nowadays even in the Russian provinces Internet access is widespread, the author’s fundamental assumption that “letters are still a common way of developing initial contact between partners” is outdated. Nor does the author distinguish between Russians and the many nationalities who populate the former USSR; a description of a visit to a Buryat serves as a basis for generalizations about Russians and alcohol.
All works cited are in English and Swedish; the bibliography does not contain a single Russian source. The extensive Russian literature on Russian women, cross-cultural dating and marriage is therefore absent, and there is no mention of even such major translated works as the well-known Russian sociologist-sexologist Igor Kon’s book, The Sexual Revolution in Russia.
Ms. Johnson seems unaware of fundamental and longstanding Russian cultural attitudes, customs and biases. When Ol’ga - one of the respondents - announces that she does not want children with a black man, the author is “slightly disturbed by what I interpreted as blatant racism, especially since another woman I had met had said nearly the same thing earlier”. The writer is also surprised that feminism “seems to carry with it an almost pathological connotation in Russian, associated with the antithesis of womanhood in an essentialist discourse”. These kinds of racist and anti-feminist attitudes are no secret to any student of Russian history and culture. The author’s comment to Valentina, whom she meets in a cafe, “Should we sit over there? I’ll buy you a drink”, reveals an ignorance of how negatively any Russian would react to the suggestion that someone would “buy” him or her a drink. Nor does Ms. Erickson seem to understand why Valentina - whom she has never met before - “would mind if I tape-recorded our conversation. . . she seemed very uncomfortable with the idea, as had all the other women I met”.
The attempt in the last chapter “;A Catalogue of Hope”, to end the narrative on a positive note verges on the maudlin, with the author imagining how a woman who decided to stay in Russia and marry a Russian will keep the letters from her American suitor “like a little box of childhood costume jewelry that can be opened up and fingered through in moments of nostalgia”. Other sweeping generalizations fall beyond the scope of this book, for example, “The female in need of steering and direction is well aligned with the developing-country role, transitional economy and social instability that Russians are currently expected to enact on the international scene”.
Dreaming of a Mail-Order Husband may perhaps appeal to readers with a general interest in Russian women, but not to those specializing in Russian culture.
Lynn Visson, Monterey Institute of International Studies
Tags:a catalogue of hope, Dreaming of a Mail-Order Husband, Ericka Johnson, mail-order husband, Russian Women, russian women seeking american spouses, Russian-American Internet Romance
