Further Instructions for American Writers Surviving Bulgaria
And How to Survive as a Bulgarian Writer in America
An American writer goes to a sufficiently unknown Eastern European country “for no definitive reason.” In the first paragraph of the essay she writes about her experiences, she describes her choice in locale thusly: “Bulgaria is just a backdrop: an affordable slice of Europe with a little Communist coloring, an abundance of tracksuits and cabbage-based meals.”
The author goes on to characterize my native country as a place where abnormally small living quarters barely seem to shelter their inhabitants from city streets ravaged by starving, howling dogs. She is miserable, her excellent cook of a husband cannot force Bulgarian ingredients into a palatable meal, and her students keep trying to push each other out of schoolhouse windows.
It seems there are few enough Bulgarian writers in the English-speaking world that an intrepid ex-pat can cast our whole citizenry as irrational, illiterate animals in sweatsuits and Greaser costumes, and a prominent website of literary thought will publish it without hesitation. After all, who would bother to respond? Apparently we Bulgarians have no voices of our own.
Further Instructions for Surviving as an American Writer in Bulgaria
Note that you should be prepared to carefully curate your data. Decide on your narrative early: it will be one of despair and western tenacity in a wretched country that you believe nobody knows or will care to defend.
Choose your destination for its low cost of living. Engage the Fulbright Program to help. They send you to a small city in southern Bulgaria where the rent on a one-bedroom apartment in the city center averages $105 USD per month. Complain about the size of your quarters. Is this representative, or did your landlord see American ignorance and choose to pick your pockets? It doesn’t matter; either bolsters your account.
Even the worst day can be helped by a good meal, so ensure that you eat none. Perhaps early in your stay, you will encounter a cabbage soup. This is neither a popular nor a common dish in Bulgaria, but it sounds unappetizing enough to serve as a lynchpin for your narrative. Eat a hundred bowls, two hundred. Ignore that even in an upscale restaurant, it would only cost ten American dollars to buy a kilo of food that looks quite different. Order only water and lots of it.
Realize, of course, that you cannot limit your perspective to one small city. Travel the country, and seek out its most depressing artifacts. Write about the super-sized, disembodied heads of Soviet generals surveying the landscape. Pretend there is nothing else. Let your guidebook gather dust. Perhaps you don’t even buy a guidebook; any one could point you to the Rila Monastery, the Panagyurishte Treasure, an ancient and beautiful seaside town, Sofia’s gold-domed cathedral, or any one of Bulgaria’s other World Heritage sites. Reject these cultural landmarks. Like rich cuisine and some of the most affordable housing in the E.U., they would only muddle your narrative of unflinching American survivalism in the wilds of Eastern Europe.
It is not enough, of course, to declare the landscape desolate and its kitchens barren. The people must also be revolting. Paint seven million citizens as mobsters, crooks, unhygienic healthcare personnel who publicly clean their teeth with surgical equipment. In your narrative, they are all preoccupied with trash fires and alleyway hand-jobs. Make no efforts to learn the language; it will spare you the trouble of considering the humanity of anyone you happen to meet. Then again, perhaps you should make some friends. You can cast them in the role of the drunkards too ignorant to appreciate the only thing that matters, the book you are writing.
Remember, through all of this, that implicit western superiority is key. Write about Bulgarian poverty without context or compassion. Show no concern for the self-immolators or the corruption that you sprinkle into your story for seasoning. Ignore a history of imperial occupation, crushing post-war sanctions, communist puppetry, and the difficulties that capitalism engenders.
Condemn xenophobia where it suits your purpose. Even at a time when America’s most prominent spokesperson on the refugee crisis is a virulently racist presidential contender backed by 44% of the public, you can still score points by demonizing easterners — but only work so hard as you need to. To understand and fight Bulgarian Islamophobia requires too much effort — you would have to engage with a five-hundred year history of Ottoman occupation, the resulting racism, and the ways all of this interacts with low GDP and high unemployment. It is easier if there is no reason; then you need offer no perspective or solution. When discussing racism in this godforsaken place, certainly don’t bother with white prejudice against the Roma people; they are strangers to American politics, and you’d gain nothing from speaking out against their subjugation.
In your final paragraphs, be sure to demonstrate some growth — this is a personal essay, after all. It can be small. Learn to drink the local liquor, for instance, so you can say that you have. Imply that this is the most this country has to offer, and still it burns going down your throat.
How to Survive as a Bulgarian Writer in America
Remember what your father told you, when you brought home an American and things started to seem serious. He said, “We’ll have to take him to Bulgaria, then.”
You laughed, asked why.
“Because until he goes there, he will always think of you as something exotic. He needs to see you as a person instead.”
Remember how silly you found this, that anyone could see Bulgaria as an exotic place. Now open your eyes. Understand how exoticism relates to the denial of agency, to the absence of representation. Understand how it relates to the erasure that allows American tourists to call your native country a “forgotten corner of the world.”
As a first-generation immigrant, know that you will struggle with national identity. You will feel as though you cannot fully belong to either country, that you can not speak for either land. Dig into this anxiety. Find the the gift hidden in this tension: that you can examine both of your homes from the outside. In this in-between space, find humanity and humility. Find empathy, and write it into every word.
Take your American partner to visit your homeland. Teach him important words — da, ne, molia, hliab, kebapche, and yes, rakia. Eat dozens of meals, none of which contain cabbage.
With your partner, explore the place of your birth. Notice that since you last came here, fewer people are out panhandling in the streets; wonder if this means things are getting better for them, or getting worse. Your elderly neighbors will shrug hunched shoulders when you ask them. They have their own problems; their health struggles, and their pensions are never enough.
Walk the capital. Compare the gleaming plazas of the city center to the root-cracked sidewalks that lead from your family’s apartment block to the market across the street. Buy banitsa, 1,50 lev a piece. Eat this for breakfast every morning.
Drive with your family for hours through the mountains. Find the centuries-old church your ancestors painted with gold-leafed murals. In this village, meet the family that cares for the church. They are also the beekeepers and the cheesemakers. They offer you their homemade rakia and you eat honey off the comb.
Later, when you read an outsider’s cruel distillate of your country, your partner is dismayed. “My mind keeps going back to that village with the church,” he says. “How fucking nice everybody was.”
At your desk, you will worry over paragraphs. Stories will languish in final drafts; you keep them hidden from the world. After all, what right do you have to speak for a land you left when you were so small? Is it possible to appropriate your own culture? You fear stumbling, hurting the people whose stories need telling.
Realize, of course, that if you do not take ownership of your homeland, then others will do it for you. They will show only the worst things. They will strip the humanity from your countrymen and replace it with their own self-indulgent fortitude. The story becomes theirs; they paint the backdrops.
There is never a good time. Sharpen your pencils, at the ready. You have work to do.
