Colleen Lutzak, a talented young Ukrainian musician from northern Alberta, struggles to maintain a sense of identity as her awareness of the world expands. Growing up in the small northern Alberta community of St. Paul, Colleen Lutzak has both positives and negatives to deal with – she has an abundance of musical talent, excellent grades in school, and a close extended family. On the other hand, she has a melodramatic mother, a nemesis named Carla Senko who somehow manages to screw up every triumph Colleen closes in on, and a cousin named Kalyna. Kalyna is Colleen’s alter ego – they have the same name in different languages – and Kalyna is a mystery. A grown woman who once had a family, Kalyna talks and acts like a child. She loves Colleen’s music more than anything in the world, and brings out every protective instinct her young cousin has. Colleen vigorously practices her youthful idealism as well as her talent. This mindset means life’s lessons will be particularly hard on her. Her beloved music teacher, who shared and supported her pride in her Ukrainian heritage, suddenly dies. Colleen fails miserably in her first attempt at university in Edmonton. She is so determined to get away from all the “disappointments” of home that she registers to attend the United World College campus in Swaziland for a year. Obviously, Swaziland is an utterly foreign experience. Colleen meets young women from truly dire political and social circumstances all over the world. She realizes how sheltered her life in Canada has been. Her sense of identity and self-worth is challenged by her foreign surroundings, her homesickness, the suicide of her closest friend. And the sudden death of Kalyna. This final tragedy forces Colleen to face adult decisions about the purpose to which she should devote her life and her talent.
On our way home, we stopped in Vegreville for one last look at the Pysanka-and, posing in front of it while my dad pulled out his camera, I wanted to cry. Are we doomed? Click. Is this all we are? Click. How do we drag ourselves out from under the shadow of the giant egg? Click." Conceived in a fervent desire for fresher, sexier images of Ukrainian culture in Canada, and concluding with a new reading of enduring cultural stereotypes, Leaving Shadows is the first Canadian book-length monograph on English Ukrainian writing, with substantive analysis of the writing of Myrna Kostash, Andrew Suknaski, George Ryga, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Vera Lysenko, and Maara Haas.
This volume brings together a group of most highly acclaimed Canadian writers and distinguished international experts on Canadian literature to discuss what potential Janice Kulyk Keefer's concept of "historiographic ethnofiction" has for ethnic writing in Canada. The collection builds upon Kulyk Keefer's idea but also moves beyond it by discussing such realms of the concept as its ethics and aesthetics, multiple and multilayered sites, generic intersections, and diasporic (con-)texts. Thus, focusing on Canadian historiographic ethnofiction, "Land Deep in Time" is the first study to define and explore a type of writing which maintains a marked presence in Canadian literature but has not yet been recognized as a separately identifiable genre.
Colleen Lutzak, a talented young Ukrainian musician from northern Alberta, struggles to maintain a sense of identity as her awareness of the world expands. Growing up in the small northern Alberta community of St. Paul, Colleen Lutzak has both positives and negatives to deal with – she has an abundance of musical talent, excellent grades in school, and a close extended family. On the other hand, she has a melodramatic mother, a nemesis named Carla Senko who somehow manages to screw up every triumph Colleen closes in on, and a cousin named Kalyna. Kalyna is Colleen’s alter ego – they have the same name in different languages – and Kalyna is a mystery. A grown woman who once had a family, Kalyna talks and acts like a child. She loves Colleen’s music more than anything in the world, and brings out every protective instinct her young cousin has. Colleen vigorously practices her youthful idealism as well as her talent. This mindset means life’s lessons will be particularly hard on her. Her beloved music teacher, who shared and supported her pride in her Ukrainian heritage, suddenly dies. Colleen fails miserably in her first attempt at university in Edmonton. She is so determined to get away from all the “disappointments” of home that she registers to attend the United World College campus in Swaziland for a year. Obviously, Swaziland is an utterly foreign experience. Colleen meets young women from truly dire political and social circumstances all over the world. She realizes how sheltered her life in Canada has been. Her sense of identity and self-worth is challenged by her foreign surroundings, her homesickness, the suicide of her closest friend. And the sudden death of Kalyna. This final tragedy forces Colleen to face adult decisions about the purpose to which she should devote her life and her talent.
On our way home, we stopped in Vegreville for one last look at the Pysanka-and, posing in front of it while my dad pulled out his camera, I wanted to cry. Are we doomed? Click. Is this all we are? Click. How do we drag ourselves out from under the shadow of the giant egg? Click." Conceived in a fervent desire for fresher, sexier images of Ukrainian culture in Canada, and concluding with a new reading of enduring cultural stereotypes, Leaving Shadows is the first Canadian book-length monograph on English Ukrainian writing, with substantive analysis of the writing of Myrna Kostash, Andrew Suknaski, George Ryga, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Vera Lysenko, and Maara Haas.
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