Dec 05, 2016 17:18
by Rita Laima
When I was a young woman, I ventured from America to my ancestral homeland, Latvia, hoping to recognize the country my grandparents and the exile Latvian community had described to me in glowing terms. In 1980, Latvia and its neighbors to the north and south, Estonia and Lithuania, were Soviet satellite republics; Jimmy Carter was U.S. president; and Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” was playing at the top of the charts, along with Blondie. I was studying art in New York City, where the AIDS epidemic was about to explode. The sound of punk rock and throbbing disco music filled Manhattan’s downtown clubs. By 1980, singer Patti Smith and her companion photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, once scrappy, struggling artists who lived near my school, were well on their way to becoming American cultural icons. Liberalism and Americans’ acceptance of multi-culturalism were on the rise. I had grown up in a bicultural environment and didn’t mind explaining to my fellow Americans where Latvia was. (..)
Рига,
всплески интернета