The Kobzars were the blind minstrels of Ukraine, who memorized the epic poems and stories of 100 generations. Traveling around the country, they stopped in towns and villages along the way, where they told their tales and were welcomed by all. During the early years of Stalin's regime in the USSR, the Kobzars wove their traditional stories with contemporary warnings of soviet repression, famine, and terror. When Stalin heard of it, he called the first conference of Kobzars in Ukraine. Hundreds congregated. Then Stalin had them murdered. As the storytellers of Ukraine died, so too did their stories.
Kobzar's Children is an anthology of short historical fiction, memoirs, and poems written about the Ukrainian immigrant experience. The stories span a century of history from 1905 to 2004; and they contain the voices of people who lived through internment as enemy aliens, homesteading, famine, displacement, concentration camps, and this new century's Orange Revolution.
More than a collection, it is a social document that revives memories once deliberately forgotten.
- Century of untold stories
- Touches on all major points of Ukrainian history
- Supported by the Shevchenko Foundation
The collection contains historical fiction, memoirs and poems covering 100 years of Ukrainian history, written by Ukrainian-Canadian writers from Quebec, Ontario and Western Canada. The contributors are all part of a circle of writers that Skrypuch met or mentored through an internet-based writers' group that she set up. The group's members, both established authors and novices, read and critiqued each others' works.
All royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association
Among the authors whose work appear in Kobzar's Children with Marsha Skrypuch are:
The Many Circles of Hell, by Stefan Petelycky, a Ukrainian survivor of Aushwitz who now lives in British Columbia, is undoubtedly the most horrific story in the collection. Petelycky vividly describe the barbaric treatment suffered by him and his fellow former prisoners, many of them Ukrainians.
"The anthology succeeds in providing a broad overview of a century of the Ukrainian immigrant experience."
— Winnipeg Free Press
Preface
A Home of Her Own by Olga Prychodko
Andriy's Break by Danny Evanishen
Tribute to My Grandmother by Kim Pawliw
It's Me, Tatia by Brenda Hasiuk
The Rings by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Spring Harvest by Linda Mikolayenko
The Red Boots by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Violin by Sonja Dunn
A Song for Kataryna by Linda Mikolayenko
Memories of Volodymyr Serotiuk's Birthday by Sonja Dunn
Auschwitz: Many Circles of Hell by Stefan Petelycky
Babyn Yar by Sonja Dunn
A Bar of Chocolate by Natalia Buchok
Bargain by Larry Warwaruk
Candy's Revenge by Cornelia Bilinsky
Veechnaya Pamyat by Sonja Dunn
Changing Graves by Sonja Dunn
Before Glasnost, Oy Tovarish by Sonja Dunn
Christmas Missed by Paulette MacQuarrie
The Gift by Sonja Dunn
About the Authors
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