As a kid growing up on “the wrong side of Wilshire” in Beverly Hills, Joanna Stingray was surrounded by wealth, but initially could only afford her trips to Russia by scraping together money working at a travel agency, where she found out about tours and booked discount tickets. It’s wonderful to see her city honoring their native daughter by celebrating the release of her upcoming book, Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground.

“When I left Russia in 1996, there was no internet [and] no cell phones so I kind of just left. In the last four years or so, I put all my old photos up on a website and saw that the Russians went crazy over it and they were very nostalgic. […]
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?  I hope readers get a sense of what was going on behind the Iron Curtain beside what they’ve seen in the days of the politics and the coldness. I hope I give them a glimpse of how similar the Russians were to us and how exciting and fulfilling their lives were even under communism. I hope they also get from the book the power of music and the power of expressing yourself through art.”