Review: I Wish I Didn't Have to Tell You This

I Wish I Didn't Have to Tell You This: A Graphic Memoir

written & illustrated by Eugene Yelchin

Candlewick Press, 2025

Category: Young Adult

Reviewer: Rebecca Klempner

 

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In this graphic memoir follow up to The Genius Under the Table, Eugene Yelchin is a 23 year old Jewish boy living in the USSR in 1980. He studies set and costume design at Leningrad’s Academy of Theater Arts, painting in his spare time. His family fears he’ll be sent to Siberia for participating in illegal exhibitions organized by Mark Baskin, who impresses Yelchin by openly displaying his Judaism. At Mark’s home, Yelchin attracts the attention of an American student named Libby, and a forbidden romance blossoms between them. When Libby encourages refuseniks to protest their plight, she gets in trouble and is sent back to the US.

 

We follow Yelchin through the harrowing dysfunctions of life in the USSR - working in Siberia to avoid being conscripted into the army, ending up in a mental hospital, and brushes with the KGB. Many hurdles must be surmounted before he is able to join Libby in the United States at long last.

 

Yelchin deftly captures his younger self in many moods: anxiety, adoration, artistic focus, irritation. Other characters have distinct personalities as well. He depicts many types of Soviet Jews: Jews who've forgotten they're Jewish outside of cultural touchstones like saying "mazal tov"; Jews who bravely identify as such in public and wear a yarmulke and Magen David; Jews who are happy to stay in their Soviet "motherland"; and Jews who wish to flee to Israel or the US. All these characters ring true.

While Yelchin acknowledges his lack of religiosity, he admires his friend Mark's public espousal of Judaism. He also mourns when Mark's pursuit of aliyah ends tragically. These references are woven into the story seamlessly and greatly increase the reader's understanding of Soviet Jewry. Yelchin provides enough context that previous knowledge of the subject is unnecessary (although it would deepen a reader's understanding of the text). 

 

The backgrounds are rendered with creative touches like newspaper photos of Brezhnev pasted onto hand-drawn TV sets and clippings of real-life landmarks integrated into the landscapes. Yelchin’s artwork supports his words superbly. This is a harrowing but ultimately hopeful look at one Jew's experience of life in the USSR.

 

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Reviewer Rebecca Klempner is a wife, mother, writer, and editor living in L.A. Her books include Glixman in a Fix, A Dozen Daisies for Raizy, How to Welcome an Alien, and Adina at Her Best (a PJ Our Way selection). A former teacher with a Master's Degree in Applied Anthropology, Rebecca spends most of her time editing other people's books, doing housework, and running verrrry slowly.