“Iveta Melnika’s White Crow is a vivid, unforgettable statement that it takes courage to be young, smart, female, and Latvian. Her astute awareness of history, politics, and economics distinguishes her memoir from narrowly self-referential accounts while remaining intimately personal and evocative. White Crow deserves a very wide readership. I look forward to hearing more from Iveta Melnika.”—Agate Nesaule, author of Woman in Amber

Tale of the White Crow is a coming-of-age memoir set in Riga in the 1990s. As the typically adolescent author changes from a self-conscious, ostracized “white crow” into the loveliest of alls swans, she passes through two different secondary schools and the University of Latvia, adventures and misadventures with friends male and female, the death of her father, baptism into and escape from the American-Based International Church of Christ, and several near-disasters in Russian disco clubs.

These scenes are played out against the background of political events in Latvia during the 1990s, and much of Melnika’s story constitutes the shared social and political history of 1990’s Riga: communal apartments, ethnic frictions, the gradual appearance of blue jeans, bananas, and Modern Talking tapes.

$15.00, paper, 232 pages, 39 photos
ISBN: 0-944024-46-7