The Untold Memory of WWI and WWII in Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s Fiction

Mateusz Swietlicki , University of Wroclaw (Institute of English Studies)

The theme of WWI and WWII does not appear in contemporary Ukrainian literature for young readers, although war was a significant theme in Soviet Ukrainian children’s literature before 1991. The lack of such publications is surprising considering the fact that the memory of the distinctive Ukrainian experience of these traumatic events can be found in Canadian-Ukrainian children’s literature, mainly in Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s fiction. Despite her popularity with North-American readers, her works have not been translated into Ukrainian and are practically unknown among Ukrainian readers and children’s literature scholars. In this paper, I want to focus on studying Skrypuch’s novels and show the way she shares her second-generation memory of the migration to Canada and the Ukrainian Canadian internment with readers. Applying the perspective of memory studies will allow me to also read Canadian-Ukrainian children’s literature as a potential source of second-generation memory for young Ukrainian readers.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 161. “Minor” Literature