In 1995, ghostwriter Lisa Dickey (Citizenville by Gavin Newsom) was working as a translator in St. Petersburg when she set out on her first voyage across a Russia still reeling from the fall of the Soviet regime. Guided by intuition, she and a photographer made their way westward from Vladivostok, profiling locals and making friends in 11 cities and villages, including Lenin impersonators, the nouveau riche and farmers descended from Genghis Khan. Dickey returned in 2005 to a Russia that was more affluent, confident and open. And in 2015, she found that that confidence had stubbornly ossified amid economic collapse and growing tensions with the U.S. Yet wherever she went, she found a gracious, savvy and often humorous people who were easily able to overlook their differences.
Bears in the Streets is about real people and their cultures, a journalistic ethnography as much as a travelogue. Dickey knows when to report objectively and when to cut loose and enjoy the vodka. She sprinkles her reportage with humorous footnotes and includes personal photos that become a metacommentary on life and aging. Dickey deftly uses her own homosexuality as a lens and point of contrast, as Russian attitudes toward gays change--albeit more slowly than in the U.S.--in the time between her visits. They still believe, however, that Americans think bears roam the Russian streets.
Bears in the Streets is one of those rare books that shows readers something new in the ordinary; it's touching, funny and utterly necessary. --Zak Nelson, writer and bookseller