Heart on my Sleeve

It's already a week into December, and so that means that I'll have to speed up and share some of my outstanding reviews for the year! I have a few books that I've read in the last while and have been meaning to talk about. So there's going to be a batch of random reads shared for the next week or two ;) I'll start with this fashion memoir by a beloved Canadian icon, Jeanne Beker -- both an entertaining and thoughtful book that is just the right topic and the right size to make a great holiday gift for any fashionistas you might know. This review was first shared at my sewing blog, and I hope you'll enjoy it here too. 

Heart on my Sleeve / Jeanne Beker
TO: Simon & Schuster, c2024. 
256 p.

This memoir by Canadian fashion icon Jeanne Beker was a delight. Unlike a traditional memoir, this is structured as a walk through memory, tied to specific pieces of clothing. It highlights how something we wear can carry history and family with it, beyond just being a piece of clothing or an accessory. I really liked this concept and the way it was carried out. She shares an item from her closet, then talks about how/where she got it and the resonances of the piece. Each chapter has a line drawing to illustrate the item, drawn by her own artist daughter. And this book sounds just like she's talking to you - the style is intimate and authentic, highlighting both the glamorous parts of her career and her personal challenges. 

I've read her earlier memoirs (such as Finding Myself in Fashion), and some of the stories here are repeated from those earlier books, but still just as enjoyable. The chapters are short, but cover a range of life moments. From the satchel her parents brought with them when they immigrated to Canada as Holocaust survivors, containing the small amount of family items they still had, to a Chanel dress given to her by Karl Lagerfeld, this book moves from touching and serious to funny & fashion-related. The pace is good and the book shares so many elements of her life, from the personal (her parents, partners and children), to the many famous fashion people she met and befriended in her many years of hosting FashionTelevision. 

There are some great moments included, from the unexpected generosity of Karl Lagerfeld (one of my favourite stories from past books too) to her interviews with fashion greats or music luminaries like Paul McCartney, Keith Richards and more (she worked on MuchMusic before fashion). I really enjoyed the way she started with her wardrobe and let each piece draw out recollections - we all have the experience of knowing just when and where we wore something, and what the meaning of it was to us; some pieces that we've kept forever because of those memories, and some that we could never wear again. 

This covers fashion history, Canadian history (a fun story about Pierre Trudeau, for example), family stories, and traces the development of Canadian media in a way, too. I thought it was a great read, and one I'd recommend to anyone interested in fashion or Canadian women's lives - especially if you were a fan of FashionTelevision in the old days like me ;) 

(review first appeared in slightly different form at FollowingTheThread)

The Photograph

The Photograph / Kat Karpenko
Pennsauken Township, NJ: BookBaby, c2020.
226 p.

I discovered this one online via my library; it's a story that was spurred by a family photo belonging to the author. It was a photo of her grandparents' full family, just before they left Ukraine for Canada in in 1928.

Karpenko has taken that photo, and some family stories, and created a novel that is deeply affecting. It's 1928, and the Karpenko family of Ukraine is feeling the looming pressure of the Stalinist government and its agricultural policies. Collectivization is going on, and any successful farmer is being branded an enemy of the state - their land and equipment should belong to the collective. Nicholai Karpenko sees no future except for more repression and state theft; he decides that his family should escape the Soviet Union and go to Canada. This is harder than it first seems, requiring some tricky planning for an escape. 

Not only that, but he can't convince any of his brothers or sisters to join them. In the end, it's only Nicholai, his wife Juliana and their three children who make their way to Canada, with a stop in Budapest to find the connections they need to leave Europe. The book is loosely arranged in three sections, starting with this emigration storyline. 

It then follows the rest of the family who stayed in Ukraine, over the years of 1929-1931, and then we experience the Holodomor, the terror-famine orchestrated by Stalin, over the years 1932-1933. These sections are historically accurate, and so quite horrific. The famine was severe, with millions of Ukrainians dying of starvation, a situation created by Stalin's policies - excessive grain quotas, restriction of movement of Ukrainian farmers, and genocidal intent. The book doesn't hide the truth, and we have characters suffering and dying. However, the book is written for school age readers, so the narrative style doesn't go into graphic descriptions. But it is clear what is happening. 

The terrible events are counterpointed by the love that this family has for one another, and the ways they try to help each other. Their survival is not assured but they keep on. And the connection with Canada in the end gives a longer view. 

This is hard-hitting but also a family story. It's well done, with a lack of overdone sentimentality, just a dose of reality. But the characters and their relationships make this a compelling read, one that brings forgotten history to life.  

To find out more about this book, you can watch Kat Karpenko's interview with HREC (Holodomor Research and Education Consortium). 

Philipovna, Daughter of Sorrow

 

Philipovna, Daughter of Sorrow / Valentina Gal
Gananoque, ON: MiroLand, c2019.
285 p.

Yesterday was Holodomor Memorial Day, as I shared in my last post. This was a manufactured famine, created by Stalin with genocidal intent. But it's still not widely known, and often denied. So I thought I would share a few novels which I've read, dealing with this event. 

I'm starting with this fictionalized memoir which was based on the author's mother's stories. And it is very powerful. It's told from the viewpoint of Vera Philipovna, a young orphan who is sent to live with her Aunt Xena's family in another small village in Ukraine. But this is the early 30s, and Stalin's famine-genocide is about to begin. 

The story covers three years of Philipovna's life, and they are hard and tragic. Most of her family dies of starvation; she is sent away to an orphanage in a town in hopes that she will survive there - in the end she is one of the few members of her family to live past the famine. But life in the orphanage is no treat. There is horrific abuse and mistreatment of both children and the women caring for them.  

This book is both hard and easy to read. Hard because of the content: there is such clear description of violence and cruelty of all kinds, all based in experiences of Ukrainians like the author's mother. Easy because the writing is fluid and clear, and in its simplicity it holds so much power.

But the book also shares details of Ukrainian culture and daily life at the time, and this is also so valuable. We see the family structures and the habits, routines, rituals, customs and traditions which Ukrainians are trying to hold on to and hide from the abusive state and its figureheads. The evocation of life before this tragedy is strong and memorable. Philipovna is lucky enough to be taken in by a loving Aunt & Uncle, and cousins too. Their life together was warm and connected, if not for the political events coming to disrupt everything about life and community. 

There is so much loss and grief here, however. It's a memorial to all those who weren't as lucky as Gal's mother and who didn't make it out of Ukraine. Gal is a Canadian writer who was encouraged to write this after taking a creative writing class, and I'm grateful that she did. It's moving, unforgettable, and rings with truth. 

Ghosts in a Photograph

 

Ghosts in a Photograph / Myrna Kostash
Edmonton: NeWest Press, c2022.
304 p.

Myrna Kostash has written many books exploring both her Ukrainian heritage and wider issues of travel, identity, and immigration. This latest one looks at her own family history, starting with some family mementos, and tracing back the stories of her recent ancestors as best as she could. But it's not just about her own family, it's about wider patterns of immigration, Ukrainian history, the unsolved murder of a Ukrainian ancestor, the interaction of Ukrainian settlers and the Indigenous peoples who were on the Alberta lands they settled, and more. 

The writing is orderly but compelling. It begins by looking at each one of her grandparents separately - they had immigrated from Galicia (Ukraine) and started the Kostash family legacy. It's an interesting setup, as one half of her family were homesteaders and farmers, what you'd think of as the 'typical' Ukrainian immigran experience, but the other half were urban working-class socialists, who had settled in Edmonton. She is able to discuss many elements of the Ukrainian Canadian community, from newspapers and organizations to traditions and expectations, through this perspective. 

There is also a fair bit about her travels to Ukraine to meet with some of her distant cousins and relatives from the home village, many of whom she had barely known about. It's here that she hears family stories from previous generations, of her grandparents' siblings and parents, including that uncle who had disappeared in one of the many wars that have affected Ukraine. All of this was informative, and a fascinating personal story that feels more universal. 

The last chapter discusses the displacement of the Indigenous peoples which resulted from her family's immigration (and the much wider flood of immigration in those early years). She has written a couple of books on Indigenous history/themes, and this concern shows in this chapter as well. This chapter doesn't have the same feeling of personal resonance as the rest of the book, but it is a vital element to acknowledge and discuss. 

This is an important book from a prolific recorder of Ukrainian Canadian social history, and I'm glad to have read it. 

This book was also the winner of this year's Kobzar Book Award. Check out all the nominees and past winners for lots of fabulous Ukrainian Canadian reading. 

Unbound

 

Unbound: Ukrainian Canadians Writing Home 
ed. by Lisa Grekul & Lindy Ledohowski
TO: UofT Press, c2016.
168 p.

This month I'll be sharing many of the Ukrainian themed reads I've been examining over the last little while. I'm starting with some books written by the Ukrainian diaspora. This one is a collection of essays about being Ukrainian, and feeling (or not feeling) the connection with the ancestral past, by Canadian women writers. 

The authors included are: 

• Janice Kulyk Keefer
• Elizabeth Bachinsky
• Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
• Marusya Bociurkiw
• Erín Moure
• Daria Salamon
• Myrna Kostash

Each of these shares their experiences investigating their Ukrainian heritage and identity, in their own ways. And this list of authors is a great way to explore further writing by each, so that you may end up with a good handful of both novels and nonfiction to explore. I've read other work by most of these authors, and so was really interested to see what they'd say in this context. 

I found this collection pretty strong, with a lot of fascinating food for thought. I felt very close to the way Janice Kulyk Keefer wrote about growing up with Ukrainian family members, and the sense of lacking essential "Ukrainian-ness" herself, because she didn't speak the language. I found each of the essays had something to ponder, although I was most caught by Kulyk Keefer, Skrypuch and Bociurkiw's writing. I've read quite a bit by each of these authors so perhaps that's why they resonated with me so much. I've also just finished one of Bociurkiw's memoirs, and found similar passages in this book (I'll be sharing that one shortly). 

This is an academic book, so I was fortunate to find it via my library - it's not widely available. I enjoyed it and wondered while I was reading what these authors might have to say now, after Ukraine has seen so much more world awareness over the past two years of war and invasion. I know it's changed my own sense of relationship to my Ukrainian ancestors and identity.  

Very worth reading this one, I recommend it to anyone interested in the Ukrainian Canadian experience, but also the experience of being third or fourth generation immigrants of any kind. It gave me a lot to think over. 

17th Annual Canadian Reading Challenge

 July is flying and I still haven't posted my Canadian Reading Challenge yet! This is the 17th year of the challenge, and of course I'll still have a go. It's hosted by Shonna at Canadian Bookworm, and you can find the info and signup here. 

The challenge is to read and review 13 Canadian books between July 1 & July 1 -- I just made it this year -- it's the reviewing that gets me :)

But I am planning to read and review along again this year, so 13 CanLit reads coming up...

Enemy Alien: a true story of life behind barbed wire

 

Enemy Alien / Kassandra Luciuk; illus. by Nicole Marie Burton
TO: Between the Lines, c2020.
140 p.

This is an interesting read -- it is based on the memoir of a Ukrainian man, but the authors note that it's not clear who exactly the author was. They've given the main character the name John Boychuk, partly because he's the most likely candidate for author, and because the name is a kind of "John Smith" name.

In any case, it is based in the first person, contemporary account of the experience of Ukrainians in Canadian internment camps during WWI. There were a number of these camps across Canada, with many new Canadians locked up because they'd come from Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And in this book, it's also shown that other men, even some Americans, were randomly caught up in the sweep to intern anyone "foreign". The illustrations are straightforward, black and white, and clearly representative of the people and the camps.

For those of us who like to think that Canadians are wonderful, kind, sweet etc., we just need to take a look at our history (both older and recent) to see how that's a false narrative. These camps resulted in the expected behaviour that crops up when some men are put into a position of power over others - lots of sadism, abuse and everyday bullying by guards, including withholding food, or making men undress in the middle of winter and run around on a frozen lake until they agree to camp demands. There were men who died due to untreated illness, or who were shot trying to escape. This book focuses on the camp at Kapuskasing, which was full of only men, but there were also other camps like the one at Spirit Lake which interned whole families. The book also shows that once they left the camp, they were sent to factories and industries far away from their homes, as forced labour -- and the end of the war was not the end of this practice. 

If you didn't know about the internment of Ukrainians during WWI already, this is a good introduction to the topic. There is an introductory essay that is a few pages long, which situates the story and provides historical background to the issue and to the specific source for this story. There is also a page long bibliography at the end if you then want to read more on this subject. I would also recommend Barbara Sapergia's novel Blood & Salt, for a fictional look at Ukrainian internment in Western Canada. 

Some Maintenance Required

 

Some Maintenance Required / Marie-Renée Lavoie
Toronto: Anansi, 2022, c2018.
272 p.

I greatly enjoyed Lavoie's two books about a "boring wife" in the past, so when this one arrived in my library recently I snapped it up. It's a standalone, and less slapstick than the previous series. But while it's a more serious look at work, coming of age, and family dynamics, it also has its share of humour. 

It's 1993 and Laurie is at that age where she has to decide what to do with her life. She's attending college but also working , first at a bakery, then a restaurant (her job interview there is quite amusing), and a bingo hall. Her mother works as a parking lot attendant and has made her tiny booth homey. Her father is a mechanic and she visits him at his shop, where she disapproves of the sexist calendars hung up, and where she meets a young man from the rich part of town and a romance slowly begins, giving Laurie a glimpse of a different kind of life.

Laurie also looks after her young neighbour, a scraggly, neglected child who really needs the stable influence of Laurie's family. While her mother is the backbone of the family there comes a point when she is the one needing "some maintenance". The story shows how everyone needs support in life, and how challenges arise that can be met with the help of others. Despite this, nothing feels sappy or sentimental here, it's rough, emotional taxing at times, but ultimately hopeful. 

I enjoyed the sarcasm and some of the set pieces in this story; they made me laugh but also touched me. And I don't think I've read anything lately that engages with work in the way that this book does. The characters spend a lot of their time at work, as people do, and that work defines them and shapes their experiences. I recognized some aspects of Laurie's jobs in the restaurant business from my own few years working in a deli, at about the same stage of life as she's in - it feels unusual to have jobs be a part of a novel in this way. So often a character just floats along and does stuff that isn't affected by income or job schedules. This book feels very life-like in its everyday acceptance that work  - and the finding of work - is a major part of life. I love that it also highlighted how work experiences can also be hilarious at times. 

But the characters are the key here, and this family was the heart of the book. Everything flowed from the relationships between all three of them. I really liked this one, and look forward to more by Lavoie.

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

 

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down / Zdena Salivarová
trans. from the Czech by Jan Drábek
Toronto: LarkWood Books, c1976.
165 p.

I found this little book a while ago in a second hand bookstore. It's the story of a young woman in Communist Czechoslovakia, and her doomed love affair with a Latvian basketball player. But it's also more than that; it reveals the daily grind of life for her family and how those who 'go along' with the new Communist regime no matter what they think do well, while those who don't (like her father) don't end up so well. 

The author, along with her spouse, the writer Josef Skvorecky, emigrated from Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet Invasion. They ended up in Toronto, where they started a publishing company, sharing the works of dissident Czech writers ie: Kundera, Klima, Vaclev Havel among others. They were also both writers, and this novel was first published in Czech and won awards, then was translated and published in English by a division of their company, 68 Publications. 

So the political situation in Czechoslovakia was a strong part of this writer's consciousness, and it shows in this book. It follows one family, through the eyes of Vera, a young woman who wanted to go to university but didn't have the right connections. Her uncle has managed to find her a job at a tv studio instead, where she ends up helping with coverage at a basketball tournament. There are teams from all over the Eastern Bloc, and she literally bumps into Janis, a tall Latvian player, in the halls. That's kismet for them, and they begin a desperate affair that only lasts a week or so, until he has to return to Latvia, which was at that time in the USSR. They both know it's unlikely they'll see each other again, but she attempts to get permission to go to Latvia, to everyone's astonishment -- people don't ask to go TO the USSR. However, all her wrangling leads nowhere, since just as she's about to succeed in her quest, she gets a letter from an anonymous Latvian acquaintance of Janis' telling her not to write to him anymore, he won't be receiving her letters any longer. That's the basic plot but there's so much more to the story. The details of political maneuvering shaping every part of daily life, of lack and scarcity, of lost opportunity, of desperation, of the recent political past in her Grandmother and Father's activities, of how all people are equal but some are more equal than others...it shows in the intimate story of one young woman's life. 

And it's a timely read in light of Russia's current behaviour; this shows that even in the 60s it was the same thing. The characters despise Russians, they mock the basketball teams from USSR countries, and nobody wants to let Russians in to clubs -- no matter if they are actually Russians or from a country controlled by Russia. Vera's Grandmother is an old Social Democrat, and she has no use for the new regime. She shares an article she wrote for an underground newspaper with Vera at one point: 

She handed me a yellowed mimeographed paper with the title "Will We Always Look On In Silence?". She wrote about how we passively witness genocide. "Killing off whole nations can not possibly be in the best interest of a workers' revolution. And just because certain nations don't want to give up their territory to those who claim it in the name of some highly doubtful class justice doesn't make it so. ... How come Russian imperialism suddenly develops a taste for the blood of workers and especially farmers and educated people in the Baltic? Isn't this a clear example of Russian imperialist designs? Don't they want to acquire new territory suitable for the invasion of countries in the West?

Lots to think about in this brief novel. From how women are always affected most harshly in these regimes to wider political discussions, to the very granular effect on one young woman's life and future. A small but mighty read.