Political Girl: Life and Fate in Today’s Russia

Alyokhina, a member of the Russian performance art group Pussy Riot, recounts in her dynamic debut memoir a life of political action and artistic repression. Born in late-1980s Moscow as the U.S.S.R. crumbled, Alyokhina was raised by her grandmother and single mother, discovering American movies and activist art while surviving teenage stints at boarding school and in the psych ward. Alyokhina joined the all-female, anti-Putin art collective Pussy Riot in 2011, at which point the memoir shifts gears. A barrage of protests, court cases, house arrests, and detentions—most consequentially Alyokhina’s 2012 to 2014 prison sentence for “hooliganism” after a Pussy Riot performance in a Moscow church—nearly overwhelm the action, crowding out Alyokhina’s more personal reflections. She makes room for asides, however, that inject the relentless catalog of injustices with humanity, as when she recalls the difficulties of dating fellow Pussy Riot member Lucy Shtein while on house arrest. Irreverent, urgent, and illuminating, this bold account offers American readers an invaluable window into contemporary Russia. It’s a winner. (Dec.)