BOOK REVIEW: Two novels for young adults mirror Ukrainian Canadian experience (08/08/04)

BOOK REVIEW

Two novels for young adults mirror Ukrainian Canadian experience

"Lesia's Dream" by Laura Langston. Toronto: HarperTrophy Canada, 2003, 209 pp., paper, $15.99

"Kalyna's Song" by Lisa Grekul. Regina, Saskatchewan: Coteau Books, 2003, 400 pp., paper, $19.95.

by Marsha Skrypuch

It was an interesting experience, reading these two wonderful stories back to back. Both novels are written from the point of view of a teen girl, and both are about the Ukrainian experience in Canada.

"Lesia's Dream" is Laura Langston's seventh children's book and second novel. Set just before and during World War I, it is a first person narrative about a teen who leaves the ethnic oppression and hardship of Ukraine only to find more of the same in Canada.

Fifteen-year-old Lesia and her older brother secretly save enough money to transport their family to Canada and away from the perpetual poverty of farming rented land even though their particular Polish landlord is kinder than most. When the teens have saved enough, they convince their parents to emigrate, but Lesia's grandmother refuses to go with them, preferring the status quo.

Canada is not the land of milk and honey that the advertisements promise, and Lesia's family find themselves on marginal scrub land with an abundance of mosquitoes. The family's fortune goes from bad to worse when World War I breaks out, and Lesia's brother and father are interned as "enemy aliens."

Ms. Langston is to be congratulated for writing a compelling novel on a shameful incident that our government has shoved under the carpet. While everyone knows about the internment of Japanese Canadians in World War II, few are aware of the fact that 8,000 Eastern European men, women and children were labeled "enemy aliens" and interned during World War I. About 5,000 of those interned were Ukrainians who were mislabelled as "Austrian," but Poles, Turks, Italians and Jews were also thrown into internment camps. In a nutshell, anyone the government didn't consider white enough was targeted. What is more remarkable is that Ms. Langston is not of Ukrainian heritage and, before embarking on this novel, she knew no one personally who had been interned.

Ms. Langston has researched her subject so thoroughly that the reader is plunged into compelling and realistic scenes set in Ukraine, the ship voyage across the ocean, and life in the wilds of Manitoba. The reader feels the stings of the summer mosquitoes and the bite of the vicious winter winds.

The most vivid scenes of the novel take place during the winter in the wilds of Manitoba. While Lesia's father and brother are interned, Lesia, her little sister and her pregnant mother must not only survive, but they must beat the clock and clear their land before the deed reverts back to the government. The core of this novel is told from Lesia's point of view as a young girl, but the story is framed with a narrative of Lesia in 2003: an old woman, telling her great-granddaughter about her experiences.

"Kalyna's Song" is Lisa Grekul's first novel, and like "Lesia's Dream," it is written in first person narrative. The frame of this novel is a hastily booked flight home to Alberta from Swaziland. Colleen must return home from her exchange year abroad in order to attend her cousin Kalyna's funeral. Within that frame, the story is fairly linear, with Colleen reminiscing about poignant and humourous incidents from her teen years.

Like Lesia, Colleen straddles two worlds. Her grandparents and parents all speak Ukrainian, but Colleen and her siblings don't. She takes Ukrainian language classes in school, and Ukrainian dance on weekends, but these are things she keeps secret from her English friends. Colleen finds that she doesn't fit in with the "super-Ukes" - the kids her age who are fluent in Ukrainian and who participate fully in the Ukrainian Canadian community. She thinks they look down on her because of her fractured Ukrainian and her ignorance about the culture. However, in the larger English community, she doesn't really belong either. She thinks these kids look down on her because of her ethnic last name. In reality, no one is thinking about Colleen nearly as much as she thinks they are.

Colleen is not entirely likeable. She is a gifted pianist and an outsider looking in. Colleen continually puts herself into situations where she can prove to others that she's better than they are, and she is continually upstaged, which makes for interesting and satisfying reading. When Colleen finds that she cannot succeed in a dramatic way at home, she goes to university for a year in Swaziland. She finds that there is no geographical solution, and the feeling of being an outsider is even more intense.

Where "Lesia's Dream" is very much a novel of external struggle and action, "Kalyna's Song" is one of introspection. The Kalyna in the title is the Ukrainian translation of Colleen. It is also the name of a beloved childlike older relative who is Colleen's alter-ego. Colleen's complex relationship with Kalyna is a metaphor for her confused idea of her own identity.

"Kalyna's Song" is filled with vivid scenes and vignettes that are so fully fleshed out in character and setting that they are almost stand-alone short stories. That Ms. Grekul can write such an absorbing first novel about small incidents of everyday life bodes well for her future endeavors.

While "Lesia's Dream" is a straightforward narrative depicting the pioneering struggles of Lesia and her family, "Kalyna's Song" is a series of vignettes that are strung together in roughly linear fashion. They are absorbing to read, but at 400 pages, there is much less story than in the mere 200 of "Lesia's Dream's." While I enjoyed every word of "Kalyna's Song," I think it would have been even stronger if it had been more tightly edited. Ironically, the only complaint I have about "Lesia's Dream" is that it ended all too soon. Both of these novels are well worth reading, and I will be keeping my eyes open for new novels by these two very talented writers.

Marsha Skrypuch of Brantford, Ontario, is an award-winning children's author. Her sixth book, "Nobody's Child" (a young adult novel set during the Armenian genocide), was published in the fall of 2003. Her first book, "Silver Threads" (a picture book set during the internment of Ukrainians in World War I), was be re-issued in a new paperback edition during winter 2003-2004.

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