Pub­lished in the ear­ly days of the fourth wave of immi­gra­tion, this is a child’s diary of her fam­i­ly’s jour­ney to the US. Kopel­nit­sky was just nine when the Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter struck only 200km away from her town. After near­ly dying of ill­ness caused by radi­a­tion fall­out, her par­ents applied to leave Sovi­et Ukraine; her diary doc­u­ments their jour­ney from Vien­na all the way to New York. In typ­i­cal, child­like fash­ion, she holds noth­ing back in describ­ing the upheavals, ten­sions and dra­ma in the fam­i­ly — the end­less wait­ing in immi­gra­tion offices, fights between her par­ents and teenage broth­er, their dingy first accom­mo­da­tions in New York. No Words to Say Good­bye offers an unusu­al ​‘in the moment’ glimpse at a gen­er­a­tion who are now begin­ning to look back on those child­hood immi­gra­tion expe­ri­ences and find­ing their voic­es as Sovi­et-Jew­ish Amer­i­can cul­ture makers.