A Reading of Alexander Motyl’s Fall River Through the Lenses of Bordermemories
Journal Title: Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal - Year 2018, Vol 5, Issue
Abstract
This paper examines the concepts of borderlands, borderscapes, and bordermemories as cultural discursive practices that have been extensively presented and analyzed in an increasing number of theoretical works in Border Studies. Contemporary American Ukrainian writers have made attempts to introduce their hybrid experience and include it into American culture. One of them is Alexander J. Motyl, whose novel Fall River (2014) is analyzed as an example of border writing. The novel is based on the author’s narrative memory, rooted in his mother’s stories about Ukraine and their family members’ crossings of borders in the interwar period and belonging to two cultures, Ukrainian and American, that shaped their identities.
Authors and Affiliations
T. P. Ostapchuk
Mykhailo Hrushevskyi’s Father: Biographical Aspects
The key scholarly issue of contemporary Ukrainian research is not only a return to existing problems and figures but also a search for new figures and the filling of historical and biographical gaps. The present article...
Found in Translation: Vasyl Stus and Rudyard Kipling’s “If”
Despite a not very complete body of foreign literary texts translated into Ukrainian, and a corresponding lacuna of Ukrainian literary texts translated into foreign languages, some unique Ukrainian translation successes...
Chornobyl as an Open Air Museum: A Polysemic Exploration of Power and Inner Self
This study focuses on nuclear tourism, which flourished a decade ago in the Exclusion Zone, a regimented area around the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Ukraine) established in 1986, where the largest recorded nuclear exp...
Serhii Yefremov: Epitome of the Ukrainian Revolution
Yefremov’s personal characteristics exemplify the characteristic features of the Ukrainian revolution. He was an argumentative, pugnacious man, and the revolution was characterized by infighting. He was an institution bu...
The Politics of Memory in Ukraine in 2014: Removal of the Soviet Cultural Legacy and Euromaidan Commemorations
The year 2014 brought great social and cultural disruptions to Ukraine. Euromaidan, the annexation of Crimea, and war in the Donbas led to significant social and political changes, with crucial transformations in the Ukr...