On Our Way Home from the Revolution: Reflections on Ukraine
Sonya Bilocerkowycz
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
In 2014 Sonya Bilocerkowycz is a tourist at a deadly revolution. At first she is enamored with the Ukrainians' idealism, which reminds her of her own patriotic family. But when the romantic revolution melts into a war with Russia, she becomes disillusioned, prompting a return home to the US and the diaspora community that raised her. As the daughter of a man who studies Ukrainian dissidents for a living, the granddaughter of war refugees, and the great-granddaughter of a gulag victim, Bilocerkowycz has inherited a legacy of political oppression. But what does it mean when she discovers a missing page from her family's survival story--one that raises questions about her own guilt? In these linked essays, Bilocerkowycz invites readers to meet a swirling cast of post-Soviet characters, including a Russian intelligence officer who finds Osama bin Laden a few weeks after 9/11; a Ukrainian poet whose nose gets broken by Russian separatists; and a long-lost relative who drives a bus into the heart of Chernobyl. On Our Way Home from the Revolution muddles our easy distinctions between innocence and culpability, agency and fate.
Product Details
Price
$19.95
$18.55
Publisher
Mad Creek Books
Publish Date
September 23, 2019
Pages
232
Dimensions
5.4 X 8.3 X 0.6 inches | 0.65 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780814255438
BISAC Categories:
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Become an affiliateAbout the Author
Sonya Bilocerkowycz's work has appeared in Guernica, Colorado Review, The Southampton Review, Image, Ninth Letter, and Crab Orchard Review. She has served as a Fulbright grantee in Belarus, an educational recruiter in the Republic of Georgia, and an instructor at Ukrainian Catholic University. She is a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.
Reviews
"A fierce, lyrical book that achieves a rare balance between the burden and beauty of heritage. A powerfully American book even as it travels to post-Cold War Ukraine. The best use of memoir is not a how-I-got-to-be-me story, but a book like this--a courageous effort to pierce the secrets of a vexed political and cultural history." --Patricia Hampl
"An emotionally urgent personal reckoning ... The granddaughter of Ukrainian refugees, [Bilocerkowycz] grew up steeped in the myths, the language, and the fierce politics of her Ukrainian-American community. On Our Way Home from the Revolution ... opens on the moment when some of these myths and political convictions begin to fray. The subsequent book-length unraveling becomes an affecting meditation on how our identities are formed, and to whom we are responsible." --John Dixon Mirisola, Los Angeles Review of Books
"The granddaughter of Ukrainian refugees growing up in Ukrainian diasporic communities, Bilocerkowycz inherited a legacy of political oppression. In these linked essays, the Ukrainian American writer unpacks that legacy and the evolution of her patriotism and national identity growing up in the U.S." --Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today
"Through these intimate reflections, Bilocerkowicz interweaves post-Soviet narratives and family mythology, creating a tapestry of interconnected essays that illuminate the complexity and responsibility of being a child of the Ukrainian diaspora. A tender and fearless read." --Kalani Pickhart, Electric Literature
"The essays build to a shocking discovery that provides a thud of misunderstanding about our collective pasts--our very ideas of ourselves--that is so profound that I have a hard time imagining a reader who will not feel equally stunned and seen....[A] magnificent debut."--Annie McGreevy, Chicago Review of Books
"An emotionally urgent personal reckoning ... The granddaughter of Ukrainian refugees, [Bilocerkowycz] grew up steeped in the myths, the language, and the fierce politics of her Ukrainian-American community. On Our Way Home from the Revolution ... opens on the moment when some of these myths and political convictions begin to fray. The subsequent book-length unraveling becomes an affecting meditation on how our identities are formed, and to whom we are responsible." --John Dixon Mirisola, Los Angeles Review of Books
"The granddaughter of Ukrainian refugees growing up in Ukrainian diasporic communities, Bilocerkowycz inherited a legacy of political oppression. In these linked essays, the Ukrainian American writer unpacks that legacy and the evolution of her patriotism and national identity growing up in the U.S." --Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today
"Through these intimate reflections, Bilocerkowicz interweaves post-Soviet narratives and family mythology, creating a tapestry of interconnected essays that illuminate the complexity and responsibility of being a child of the Ukrainian diaspora. A tender and fearless read." --Kalani Pickhart, Electric Literature
"The essays build to a shocking discovery that provides a thud of misunderstanding about our collective pasts--our very ideas of ourselves--that is so profound that I have a hard time imagining a reader who will not feel equally stunned and seen....[A] magnificent debut."--Annie McGreevy, Chicago Review of Books
"Part mythology, part personal essay, and part historical fact-finding mission that circles her family's patriotic devotion to Ukraine, Sonya Bilocerkowycz asks what it means to love a country that struggles to confront its complicated history and wonders what to make of the incomplete narrative she inherited as a child. Tender, probing, and deeply honest." --Angela Pelster