One More Year- Maia in Yonkers/Better Half

The short story Maia in Yonkers is a story full of meaning and imagery displaying a mother and sons relationship. The first half of the short story shows a little bit of the struggle the mother and some of the family members go through in Tbilisi. The son goes to the embassy to get his visa and needs to pass an interview. This reminds Maia of her own struggle to go through the interview, she ended up lying to the embassy in order to come to America. The mother also constantly thinks about her husband who passed away. "At these moments she doesn't feel that her life with him has ended, but that it's still playing underneath her present life" I think this quote is very important in that in those societies woman are almost helpless by themselves. I don't mean this in a bad way at all, it is just the way it is sometimes. In our society woman are becoming more and more independent and some married women are making more money then men these days. However in eastern Europe women still struggle to get by and need more structure and as in Maia's case she needs her husband. I think Maia moved to America to not only get away from the hardship, but America is so much more open to women leading the way and being able to do and work at whatever they would like. America opens the opportunity for many women. Once the son comes to visit the reader feels a distance between the mother and son. This is unfortunate due to the fact the son seems to be very ungrateful for the fact his mother pays thousands of dollars for him to go the a private school. "In New York City nothing impresses him, He drags his feet when they run to catch buses." Gogi seems to be disappointing in everything like nothing is good enough. Instead of being happy with his mother he almost doesn;t want to be anywhere around her. This pattern seems to shift when they go shopping and walking around in New York City, they seem to grow closer and want to learn more and more about each other. But once again he shows an attitude at the end of the story and it seems all the mother wants is for him to be happy just as any mother does, and once he leaves she is sad and she knows Tbilisi isn't the right place for her son but she feels like there is not much more she can do about it.

In the short story better half, the reader sees another women's struggle to be happy in the society she is faced with. anya seems to be locked up and cant escape the tight grip of her husband. The both of them constantly fight and it seems as if they lack happiness altogether. Part of this may be due to the fact that they are 22 and got married a bit too young or the both of them are just ignorant and immature. "Scheming! What would I be scheming about? You're always coming to the diner to spy on me." Here is a prime example of how the couple really lacks the basic fundamentals of any relationship whether married or not. Couples have to trust each other or else you would drive each other crazy. And defiantly before somebody gets married trust needs to be the number one thing you like about each other. This story seems to be an ongoing fight between the both of them, every night or everything they do, there is no happiness. Obviously they get a divorce which is the best for the both of them and finally Anya gets what she wants freedom to live her life the way she wants. She moves to New York city and begins taking classes and working. This allows her to build a new life and use America to its full advantage. Once again the author uses America as a way for the characters to escape the hardships of the motherland. There really seems to be no other way for the characters to escape and so they let go of what they have endured for so many years and move on with their lives. In doing so they seem to be at peace with what they have in front of them.