Happy New Year! 2022 is finally over. Even though this year was miserable on many fronts, I read 56 awesome books, some even published this year! Here are some of my favorite/most interesting reads of the year.

Amanat: Women’s Writing From Kazakhstan Selected and Translated by Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega

If you know me, you know I love Central Asian literature, so you can imagine my joy at finding out there was an anthology of Kazakh women writers!

Even though I only finished this book a few days ago, it might be my all time favorite read of the year. It’s the first ever anthology of all Kazakh women writers and it was organized by writer Zaure Batayeva with support from Shelley Fairweather-Vega, who helped with the translations, Words Without Borders, and the publishing house: Gaudy Boy. 

The stories were written within the thirty years since Kazakhstan’s independence and covers vast topics such as widows waiting for their loved ones to return from WWII, the Kazakh Famine, and the 1986 protest. However, there are also stories that capture the small everyday moments of living in Kazakhstan during three decades of extreme upheaval, where nothing is stable, but everything remains the same. Approximately half of the stories were written originally in Kazakh and the other half were originally written in Russian.

Each story is absolutely beautiful with gorgeous and tragic lines like: “When life changes as fast as evil, there is nothing you can do” from the short story “Hunger” by Aigul Kemelbayeva. Each story is an amazing collection of tragedy, joy, and the struggles of everyday life that are common to everyone, no matter where one is from. 

While I loved every story, some of my favorites were;

• “Aslan’s Bride” by Nadezhda Chernova which narrates the lives of the widows in a small village waiting for the return of their husbands from WWII
• “The Rival” by Zira Naurzbayeva which explores the importance of the dombyra in the lives of a couple
• “Operatic Drama” by Lilya Kalaus in which two characters compete in whose family suffered more during the Soviet Union
• “Black Snow of December” by Asel Omar which is a moving and exhilarating tale of the 1986 protests. The Kazakh Government still refuses to acknowledge the dead and wounded and it’s a delicate subject in modern day Kazakhstan
• “The Lighter” by Olga Mark which is a heartbreaking tale of a young sex worker who does what she has to, to survive the city streets
• “My Eleusinian Mysteries” by Zira Naurzbayeva which is a touching tale of the relationship between mothers and daughters and what people will do for love. 
• ”The Beskempir” by Zira Naurzbayeva which is a humorous but also sad story of several old women/grandmothers which reminded me of the older Russian women I used to work with at the Refugee Processing Center. 

Overall this was an amazing collection of stories from writers who are often overlooked because of their gender and their homeland. I highly recommend this book to everyone. You can find it on bookshop as well as your other favorite bookstores. 

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