The terra incognita of memory. The untold history of WWI in Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s fiction

Abstract

Ukrainian-Canadian children’s author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch has published several books about the Canadian First World War Internment. This issue first appeared in her debut picturebook Silver Threads (1996), illustrated by Michael Martchenko, then in the two texts pub-lished as part of the popular Dear Canada series, the novel Prisoners in the Promised Land. The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk (2007), and its companion Christmas story An unexpected memory (2009). Despite Skrypuch’s popularity with North-American readers, her works have not been published in Ukraine and are practically unknown among Ukrainian readers and children’s literature scholars. By analyzing Skrypuch’s WWI-themed works, the author of this article wants to show that such texts have the potential to help young readers learn about the history of not only Canada but also Ukraine. The analysis of Skrypuch’s works demonstrates that literature of the diaspora, which draws on the individual experiences of victims and witnesses of internment, can possibly serve as a medium filling in the white spots of cultural memory.