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When Luba Leaves Home 4 presents the oppo site side of the Ukrainian American coin. Zabytko’s focus is no longer on the ancestral home, but on life in the United States of America. Although the story de velops in Chicago’s Ukrainian village, it could have happened in New York, Cleveland or San Diego be cause it is the story of any first-generation Ukrainian- American children facing mainstream America. The novel is a masterpiece comfortably at ease in the genre of American Ethnic Literature. As one critic puts it: The novel presents thirteen fully linked stories which describe thirteen situations in which the main character, Luba, desperately tries to pull away from the home-community cradle, only to be pulled back in. [Book jacket] Luba’s per sonal saga echoes that of any young college woman’s search of her identity. The story reaches quickly a universal theme: the destiny of first generation Americans. The foreign-born parents want their children to speak their lan guage, learn their history, and maintain their culture while living in the adoptive country. Zabytko's novel is about a woman whose tra ditional role is to be the youngest nurturer at home as well as in the Ukrainian community, and she fails to extricate herself from this community. The author of The Coast of Chicago, Stuart Dybek, praises Irene Zabytko’s masterpiece with these words: Zabytko . . . renders Chicago’s Ukrainian Vil lage with naturalness and authenticity that in forms every word of these artfully linked sto ries. Her book has the arc of a novel, one that is about boundaries, visible and invisible - his torical, psychological, emotional - that require much more than a passport to cross. Award - winning writer Irene Zabytko adds a bright new chapter to the classic story of how the children of America’s melting pot grow up strong enough to carry their double identity. We must recognize how fortunate the Ukrain ian community in America is to count among its liter ary figures a women writer such as Irene Zabytko. On one hand, her literary corpus speaks highly of her in tense upbringing as Ukrainian (Ukrainian school, Ukrainian girl scouts, and Ukrainian Church). On the other hand, it also speaks highly of her commitment to be the voice of her generation. On the literary level, Zabytko does much more than create novels, because her novels reach the universal. When Irene Zabytko writes about the old farm woman Marusia or about the young college student Luba, she transcends national boundaries. Her stories can take place in any given motherland and in any corresponding ethnic-American ghetto. On the linguistic level, the reader smiles and rejoices at “Zabytko’s One H undred” - a great lexicon o f one hundred U krainian term s that have found their legitim ated niche in A m erican Ethnic Literature.5 Copyright by Helene N. Turkewicz-Sanko, Ph.D. John Carroll University, February 2004 Notes 1 The Ukrainian Weekly, May 4, 2003 (Vol LXXI # 18. page 16), The Ukrainian Weekly of June 20, 2003 (Vol LXXI #26: 11 and 20), The Ukrainian Weekly. The issue of Au gust 31, 2003 Vol. LXXI. #35: 1 land 20). Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 2000. 3 Numerous journals praised this masterpiece as "poignant and inspiring." The Library Journal called it "a first novel of surprising power and simplicity." The Denver Post" has called it "riveting . . . beautifully written . . . a story of tri umph and the power of home and love with all their faults." The Chicago . Tribune reported, "The strength of the novel lies in Zabytko’s ability to capture the reality of everyday life, the horror of the fallout from a nuclear accident, and the power of the human spirit to survive." [Booklist] 4Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman Publishing, 2003. www.algonquin.com 5 Zabytko’s One Hundred. There are one hundred words and idiomatic expressions that Irene Zabytko imbedded in her recent novels about Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Americans. The lexicon includes numerous fields of interest: terms of endearment, familiar exclamations, terms to identify people in family and in the community, idiomatic expressions, cul tural semantics, and culinary terms. Twenty percent of these verbal linguistic utterances begin with the least popular al phabetic letter of the English dictionary, the letter “K”! A few examples follow: Kotyku! = My little kitten! Didu = Grandpa Dorohen’ka! = dearest Sonechko! = my sunshine! Bida! = calamity! Dai Bozhe! = May God grant Do bisa! = To the devil! Nu? = Well? Svynia! = Swine! Zaraza = plague Dipisty = displaced persons who came from camps to Ame rica in the 1950s Duraky = Idiots Intelligentsia = People with education Medsestra = nurse Moskal = Russian Muryny = African-Americans Pidstrilena = half-cocked crazy Mnohaia Lita = Long Life! Na zdorovia! = To your health! Starist’ ne radist’ = old age Vichnaya pamyat’! = Eternal memory! Panakhyda = Chant of the dead Sharavary = Baggy Balloonwide pants; one size fits all. Ziyi Dukh = Bad Spirit Samohonka = 100% proof home brewed moonshine
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