“I give you these memories as seeds…” — Transfer of Next-Generation Diasporic Memory in Laura Langston’s “Lesia’s Dream” (2003)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze Laura Langston’s novel Lesia’s Dream (2003) in the perspective of memory studies and to show the mnemonic potential of children’s literature. Considering the protagonist of the novel as both the recipient and the giver of memory, the author of the article shows that by using the history of Canadian internment of Ukrainians during World War I, the most traumatogenic experience of Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, Langston creates a narrative that has the potential to initiate the transfer of next-generation memory, both individual and collective. As a result, Langston’s novel appears to be a text that can promote the memory of the Ukrainian diaspora in its youngest representatives, people who do not know the country of their ancestors. It may also help to incorporate the experience of the first wave of Ukrainian immigration into Canadian cultural memory. The analysis of the novel suggests that to maintain a sense of unity and continuity, the diaspora community must continue to feed on the memories of its own past, especially those of its near-death (in this case represented by internment), thus avoiding the hypothetical threat of losing a separate identity.