Dreaming of a Mail-Order Husband: Russian-American Internet Romance

If you look online, you will find more and more dating sites featuring Russian and Eastern European women. The sites will tell you that there are thousands of classy, sophisticated, educated, gorgeous women waiting to be found and for only a few dollars a letter, she can be yours. Well as with most thing in life, the truth and the marketing are not the same. The first thing you need to understand when reading Ms. Johnson's book is that she is an academic and the book appears to be written if not for an academic audience, then at least so as to be appealing to them. This can be distracting, as here analysis often interrupts the flow of the stories like 21 year old Olga whose mother is pushing for her to find a foreigner, entrepreneur Vera who helps women take glamour photos and write the key phrases in their letter that will attract foreign men, or couple Anastasia and John. The oddest story for me was that of Robert, whose mother pretends to be him and picks a wife for him online. When he goes to meet her he proposes right away in the airport and she accepts. Great stuff for the movies a little odd in real life. You can get beyond the hype and realize that these are real people with hopes, dreams and fears caught up in challenging situations and their reasons and desires for escaping them vary from woman to woman. A quick read and well worthwhile. Cheers!

I read this book in two days. I loved it! As a woman from the former Soviet Union I can testify how much of this book rings true. I have many friends who would like to find their husbands overseas and I noticed many similarities between the women described in this book and my friends. They have the same hopes and dreams and fears and uncertainties. I really appreciated the way that the author intersperses her personal experiences with her theoretical research. The book takes us on a journey of the largely unspoken realities of daily life of women from different backgrounds in Russia. Through the portraits of six women, people in the West can better understand why women from Russia are looking for their matches in America or Europe. Ericka Johnson impressed me by traveling to Russia for an extended period in the 1990s - a terrible time of painful moral, political and economic transition. The author vividly illustrates what poverty means in her first story when she visits a house and is served "chicken soup," consisting mostly of one boiled chicken claw. And she got the choice serving - her hostess and her hostess' mother just had bowls of broth with little pieces of onion floating on top. But in spite of very challenging circumstances, women were somehow able to get access to internet, indirectly in most cases, to meet men in the West. But what is perhaps most striking about this book is that it's not a simple story line of women trying to do anything to escape their difficult economic and social conditions. They want to find happiness. It was fascinating to read this book through the lens of an American woman's eyes. The author is continuously offered to read letters from American men to their prospective brides and we see how American men consistently deride American women. Ericka writes: "I was stuck by the way Russian brides were sometimes talked about as if they were helpless objects to be taken care of by the man, like children or pets rather than capable adults and equal partners in a relationship." It surprised Ericka - and I'm sure it will surprise many readers - how Russian woman define "feminism." Along with the stories of six fascinating women, readers will find very interesting insights into the influence of the Soviet period on women's current lives. This book is helpful to anyone interested in understanding people in Russia - particularly if one is interested in meeting a woman from Russia. The book helps to serve as a bridge between women and men from two different countries - explaining many of their differences in culture, traditions and expectations. Of course I was able to identify most with the women described in the book, but I was also moved by the story of an elderly American man, Matti. How did a man from Duluth, Minnesota end up married to a Russian woman and living in Karelia, Russia? Why was he twice sent to a prison in Siberia? How did he get stuck in the Soviet Union? Why couldn't he make it back home