This is the first book monograph devoted to Anglophone Ukrainian Canadian childrens historical fiction published between 1991 and 2021 and consists of five chapters offering cross-sectional and interdisciplinary readings of almost forty books novels, novellas, picturebooks, short stories, and a graphic novel.
This is the first book monograph devoted to Anglophone Ukrainian Canadian childrens historical fiction published between 1991 and 2021. It consists of five chapters offering cross-sectional and interdisciplinary readings of 41 books novels, novellas, picturebooks, short stories, and a graphic novel. The first three chapters focus on texts about the complex process of becoming Ukrainian Canadian, showcasing the experiences of the first two waves of Ukrainian immigration to Canada, including encounters with Indigenous Peoples and the First World War Internment. The last two chapters are devoted to the significance of the cultural memory of the Holodomor, the Great Famine of 1932-1933, and the Second World War for Ukrainian Canadians. All the chapters demonstrate the entanglements of Ukrainian and Canadian history and point to the role Anglophone childrens literature can play in preventing the symbolical seeds of memory from withering. This volume argues that reading, imagining, and reimagining history can lead to the formation of beyond-textual next-generation memory. Such memory created through reading is multidimensional as it involves the interpretation of both the present and the past by an individual whose reality has been directly or indirectly shaped by the past over which they have no influence. Next-generation memory is of anticipatory character, which means that authors of historical fiction anticipate the readers both present-day and future not to have direct links to any witnesses of the events they discuss and to have little knowledge of the transcultural character of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1:
Land of All Colours and Races?: Canadian Cossacks, Indigenous Peoples, and the Myth of the Founding Fathers of the Prairies
Chapter 2
: "Unspeakable. Unacceptable. Then and Now": The First World War and Canadian Internment Camps
Chapter 3:
Canadian Pysanky and the Survival of the Seeds of Memory
Chapter 4:
"You filthy little
Zaraza!": Red Terror, Collectivization, and the Holodomor in Canadian Cultural Memory
Chapter 5:
Survivors, Oppressors, Implicated Subjects, and Entangled Bystanders: The Second World War and the Holocaust
Conclusion
Appendix
Mateusz wietlicki is Assistant Professor at the University of Wrocaws Institute of English Studies and Director of the Center for Young Peoples Literature and Culture. His scholarship focuses on North American and Ukrainian childrens and YA literature and culture, memory, gender, and queer studies, as well as popular culture and film. He has published in English, Ukrainian, Polish, and Croatian.
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