Grads

All MALS alumni, faculty and current students are invited to the annual luncheon and open meeting on Thursday, July 7, at the Hanover Inn. the luncheon will begin at noon, and this year’s guest speaker is Diederik Vandewalle, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth. He is the author of A History of Modern Libya, and his interests focus on the politics of economic and social development in the Middle East, North Africa and the Third World. The price of the luncheon is $20 for alumni, and a reservation is essential. Please call the MALS office at (603) 646-3592 or email mals.program@dartmouth.edu.

I have news of a new memoir published in February by Potomac Books. Ancient Furies was written by the late Anastasia V. Saporito (MALS ’78) with her husband, donald l. Saporito. i found this incredible account of adolescence during WW II so riveting that I could not put it down. I am deeply distressed that I will never know how “asya,” who died in 2007, made for herself an entirely new life on a new continent in the decade before she met her future husband in Denver.

Asya was the daughter of an aristocratic Rus- sian army officer. On a major offensive through Ukraine after the Russian revolution, he liberated prisoners from a jail. He was looking for White Russians captured by the Red Army and found two daughters of the pre-revolution governor general of Ukraine. The younger, beautiful one became asya’s mother, and the other, disabled by what was probably cerebral palsy, became her beloved aunt. When the tide of war turned against them, the three fled to Shanghai to stay with friends and relatives until King Alexan- der of Yugoslavia invited the defeated tsarist forces to form a community in Belgrade. This is where Asya was born in 1928 and spent her early childhood, which was never an ordinary life. Her mother gave weekly, formal dinner parties for her Russian friends. One of these included the crown prince of Italy. Asya, an only child, was usually surrounded by adults. Her mother stressed the importance of learning as many for- eign languages as possible, and when asya was 3 hired tutors for her. Her father insisted that she build what he referred to as a “foundation.” this involved fortitude, resilience, always being true to her values and pride in her Russian background. Her destiny was planned for her step by step. She was to attend the Sorbonne when she finished high school in Belgrade and then return home, perhaps to marry a son of her parents’ friends.

In the spring of 1941 the Germans bombed Belgrade and the invasion and occupation fol- lowed. At the end of the war Asya had lost her home, her family, her country and her life of privi- lege. She still had her fluency in five languages and her foundation. Both of these were instrumental in her survival.

Asya began her book in 1967. Donald prom- ised to help her edit the work, but work and rais-

ing children delayed the project. They lived in Norwich, Vermont, for 10 years. Donald worked in the Dartmouth library and Asya taught conver- sational Russian. Her MALS thesis was Beyond Dick and Jane: On Becoming a Person. In it she discussed the difficulty of maturation facing most adolescent girls and the traumas and difficul- ties of her own adolescence in the midst of war and destruction. In her dedication of the book she mentions that she wants to leave a record of what she found too painful to speak about. Do not miss this moving book. You can feel the pain of her words.

—Jane Welsh, 175 Greensboro Road, Hanover, NH 03755; (603) 643-3789; m.jane.welsh.gr@ dartmouth.edu