Reflections on Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, (Auto)Biography, Life-Writing, and the Essay
30 Jun 2012 at 11:23
Julija Šukys
Archives, CNF Conversations, Creative Nonfiction, Eastern Europe, Ellen Cassedy, Interviews, Journeys, Judaism, Language and Multilingualism, Lithuania, Translation, Uncategorized, Villages, Vilna Ghetto, Vilnius, Yiddish
We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust. University of Nebraska Press, 2012. We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust tells the story of Ellen Cassedy’s personal journey into the Jewish heartland of Lithuania – the land of her Jewish forebears – and then expands into an exploration of how Lithuania today is engaging with [...]
08 Sep 2011 at 08:18
Julija Šukys
Academia, Children, Domesticity, Journeys, Language and Multilingualism, Malta and Gozo, Research, Saints, Uncategorized, Villages, Writing
My husband, son and I have just arrived in Malta. Sean is on sabbatical this year, so, many months ago we started casting about for destinations we could afford on a reduced salary for 8 months. I wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny. Sean wanted lots of room in the house so that both [...]
28 Mar 2011 at 15:47
Julija Šukys
Autobiography, Biography, Creative Nonfiction, Exile, Lithuania, Memoir, Ona Šukienė, Personal Essays, Publishing, Research, Russia, Siberia, Stephen Elliott, Uncategorized, Villages, Writing
I’ve finally started writing my new book, Siberian Time, in earnest. It will tell the story of my grandmother’s 17-year exile to Siberia. Inevitably, too, it will tell stories about my family members: my father, his sisters, my cousins, my grandfather. Because my chosen forms are the personal essay and creative nonfiction, I almost always [...]
22 Nov 2010 at 12:45
Julija Šukys
Academia, Exile, Mothering, Russia, Siberia, Villages, Writing, Yoga
La varicelle, as it’s called around these parts, or chicken pox to us English speakers. Our doctor confirmed it this morning. Despite my son’s vaccine against it, the virus has taken hold, though perhaps not as firmly as it might have otherwise. As I write, my red-spotted boy colours beside me with his new markers, [...]
12 Nov 2010 at 15:50
Julija Šukys
Archives, Canada, Children, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Exile, Language and Multilingualism, Letters, Life-writing, Lithuania, Mothering, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Villages, Writer's block, Writing
Pictured above is one of my most cherished possessions. It’s a 1947 postcard sent from my grandmother in Siberia, addressed to her husband and children. It was sent to a town in Massachusetts where we had relatives, though at the time my grandfather and his kids (my father among them) were living in the UK. [...]
17 Aug 2010 at 12:22
Julija Šukys
Exile, Journeys, Lithuania, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Villages, Writing
I’m home. Two cousins and I spent fourteen days travelling from Lithuania to Siberia’s Tomsk region, in search of the neighbouring villages of Brovka and Bialystok where my grandmother lived in forced exile and worked on a collective farm for seventeen years (for a time she lived in one village, then in the other). We [...]
10 Jun 2010 at 11:30
Julija Šukys
Exile, Friendship, Journeys, Language and Multilingualism, Research, Russia, Siberia, Villages, Writing
For the past week I’ve been sending badly written Russian emails to strangers all over Siberia. In them I explain that I will be arriving in Tomsk with my cousin in August by train, that we are looking for the village where our grandmother lived and worked for seventeen years, that I am a Canadian [...]
19 May 2010 at 11:36
Julija Šukys
Canada, Children, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Exile, Gardening, Journeys, Language and Multilingualism, Letters, Lithuania, Mothering, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Slavs, Villages
A couple months ago I took my son to visit my Aunt Birutė to talk about family history and my grandmother’s exile. She gave me some extraordinary photographs during that visit, including several from Siberia. More than I expected. One small photograph, dated 1957, shows my grandmother’s house. Made of logs and with a straw [...]
31 Mar 2010 at 08:59
Julija Šukys
Alternate Economies, Anthropology, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Friendship, Gardening, Journeys, Margaret Paxson, Research, Russia, Siberia, Slavs, Villages, Writing
I’ve been reading my friend Margaret Paxson’s book, Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village. Paxson, an anthropologist, watched, interviewed and listened to the villagers of Solovyovo for many months to learn how they related to each other, to their land and to the past. Yesterday, shortly before going to a dinner party [...]
17 Mar 2010 at 08:22
Julija Šukys
Adoption, Archives, Autobiography, Biography, Children, Eastern Europe, Feminism, Letters, Life-writing, Lithuania, Lituanus, Mothering, Ona Šimaitė, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Slavs, Villages, Vilna Ghetto, Writing
True story: A researcher at the archives at Kent State University stumbles on the transcript of an interview with her grandmother. This is what happened to me in 2001, when I made the trip from Chicago to Kent, Ohio to look at two boxes of uncatalogued Šimaitė papers. Inside one of the cartons was a [...]
