Heritage, Connection, Writing

Figures

Figure 1. Jocelyn Bartkevičius. Photograph by Nkosi Shanga. Reproduced with permission from Jocelyn Bartkevičius

Figure 2. Lidia Yuknavitch. Photograph by Andrew Kovalev. Reproduced with permission from Lidia Yuknavitch

Figure 3. James Joseph Brown. Photograph by Patricia Sheekey. Reproduced with permission from James Joseph Brown

Figure 4. Paul Jaskunas. Photograph by Andrew Copeland. Reproduced with permission from Paul Jaskunas

Figure 5. Ken Ilgunas. Photograph by Woody Welch. Reproduced with permission from Ken Ilgunas

Figure 6. Rasa Gustaitis. Photograph by Usha Moss. Reproduced with permission from Rasa Gustaitis

Figure 7. Svaja Vansauskas Worthington. Photograph by Bob Worthington. Reproduced with permission from Bob Worthington

Figure 8. Birutė Putrius. Photograph by Alban Nazivet. Reproduced with permission from Birutė Putrius

Figure 9. Jonas Zdanys. Photograph by Joana Zdanys. Reproduced with permission from Jonas Zdanys

Figure 10. Irene Guilford. Photograph by Ruth Kaplan. Reproduced with permission from Irene Guilford

Figure 11. Kęstutis Nakas. Photograph by Laima Vincė. Reproduced with permission from Laima Vincė

Figure 12. Antanas Sileika. Photograph by Liudas Macys. Reproduced with permission from Antanas Sileika

Figure 13. Daiva Markelis. Photograph by Rita Markelis. Reproduced with permission from Daiva Markelis

Figure 14. Nida Dauknys. Photograph by James Flachsbart. Reproduced with permission from Nida Dauknys

Figure 15. Daiva Chesonis. Photograph by Daiva Chesonis. Reproduced with permission from Daiva Chesonis

Figure 16. Laima Vincė. Photograph by Jurginas Žilys. Reproduced with permission from Laima Vincė

Figure 17. Audrė Budrys. Photograph by Suzanne Plunkett. Reproduced with permission from Audrė Budrys

Figure 18. Milda De Voe. Photograph by Luba Grosman. Reproduced with permission from Milda De Voe

Figure 19. Rimas Užgiris. Photograph by Benas Jaruševičius. Reproduced with permission from Rimas Užgiris

Figure 20. Maria Williams. Photograph by Lyric Williams-Russel. Reproduced with permission from Maria Williams

Figure 21. Julija Šukys. Photograph by Elizabeth McGuire. Reproduced with permission from Julija Šukys

Figure 22. Gint Aras (Karolis Gintaras Žukauskas). Photograph by Laima Vincė. Reproduced with permission from Laima Vincė

Figure 23. Lina Ramona Vitkauskas. Photograph by Lina Ramona Vitkauskas. Reproduced with permission from Lina Ramona Vitkauskas

Figure 24. Samuel Bak. Photograph by Laima Vincė. Reproduced with permission from Laima Vincė

Figure 25. Ellen Cassedy. Photograph by Brad Fowler. Reproduced with permission from Ellen Cassedy

Figure 26. Rita Gabis. Photograph by Rena Castelnuovo. Reproduced with permission from Rita Gabis

Figure 27. Malachi Black. Photograph by Birutė Ona Black. Reproduced with permission from Malachi Black

LAIMA VINCĖ Preface: A Conversation Between Descendants and Ancestors

Heritage, Connection, Writing: Conversations with North American Lithuanian Diaspora Writers presents different perspectives on what it means to retain a Lithuanian or Litvak¹ heritage while living in North America and writing in English. The oldest participant in this book, as of this writing, is age 91, and the youngest 40. Within those 51 years lies a vast expanse of history and cultural identity, sometimes lost and later regained. With birth years spanning from 1933 to 1985 this book presents the voices of a cross-section of three generations. Memory and postmemory² writing are important features in the work of many of these writers. The rite of return journey³ is key to many of the conversations in this book and is one of the major themes in literature produced by these writers.

In its essence, this is a book of conversations between descendants and ancestors. The Lithuanian word for ancestors is protėviai—elders who came before. The word for homeland is tėvynė—the land where the elders reside. Etymologically, the concepts of homeland and ancestors are linked through language. This connection is deeply embedded in the Lithuanian psyche and continues even in the diaspora.

The experience of growing up within (and sometimes leaving) the North American Lithuanian diaspora community is one of the themes explored by some of the writers interviewed in Heritage, Connection, Writing. The writers and poets in this book integrate their Lithuanian and Litvak heritage, history, collective trauma, and cultural memory into their literary work. Many of these writers seek to build bridges into the future with contemporary Lithuania.

Over the years that I collected these interviews (2016–25), I spoke with American and Canadian writers with Lithuanian and Litvak heritage who have made their homes in Alaska, California, Chicago, Colorado, New York, Scotland, Vilnius, and many other places. For many of these writers, their Lithuanian or Litvak heritage is linked with the collective trauma of the bloodlands.⁴ At the same time, many of the writers included in this book reflected that identity and heritage provide them with a positive source of community, culture, belonging, and connection with Lithuania while living abroad. Some of the writers interviewed have lived in Lithuania as Fulbright scholars⁵ or first encountered Lithuania through service in the Peace Corps. With the exception of Lidia Yuknavitch and Maria Williams, all the writers interviewed for this book have traveled, lived, studied in Lithuania. Many stated in their interviews that the reason for their travel was to search for and reconnect with family estranged by the Soviet Russian occupation, to re-establish their roots, forge cultural connections, study, share their literary work in conferences and literary festivals, and to teach. There is a transnational aspect to these writers’ lifestyles, with movement between Lithuania and the United States and Canada. A transnational sense of being in the world is reflected in their literary work.

Heritage, Connection, Writing is organized into three sections. Part I consists of conversations with writers whose ethnic Lithuanian ancestors immigrated to the United States and Canada during the first wave of migration from Lithuania that took place from 1868 to 1918. This migration was mostly economically motivated, although conscription into the Russian army was a major catalyst for emigration for both Litvak and Lithuanian men. Litvak emigration tended to be permanent, while Christian Lithuanian emigration tended to be cyclical, with family members returning with savings from their earnings to re-establish themselves in Lithuania.

When Lithuania gained its independence from Tsarist Russia in 1918 the nature of migration changed. Included within Part I are writers with ancestors from a second wave of emigration, which took place during the years of the Republic of Lithuania, 1918–40. However, in some respects, this period of migration could be seen as an expression of transnationalism because during the years of independence Lithuanians traveled back and forth between the United States and Lithuania for economic and family reasons.⁶ World War II and the Soviet Russian occupation of Lithuania (1941/1944–91) isolated Lithuania from the West and rendered international travel nearly impossible.

The second section of this book consists of conversations with the descendants of political refugees who fled Lithuania during the first and second Soviet Russian occupations (1940–1 and 1944–91) and is divided into two subsections. The first section features interviews with writers who were displaced out of Lithuania as children and those born in the displaced persons camps in the Allied territories of Germany after World War II. The second subsection focuses on second and third generation American and Canadian born writers who grew up for the most part within the cultural, social, and educative space of the Lithuanian diaspora community created by the displaced persons (D.P.s) after emigrating to the United States and Canada in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Most of the descendants of World War II refugees from Lithuania grew up in diaspora communities in Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

Part III is comprised of conversations with three generations of American writers of Litvak heritage, all of whom have chosen to maintain cultural and social ties with the contemporary Republic of Lithuania. Admittedly, this section is the slimmest with only four writers represented.⁷ For Litvaks, the relationship with Lithuania is more complex and is further explored in the introduction to Part III.

My previous book in the Exile Studies series, Vanished Lands: Memory and Postmemory in North American Lithuanian Diaspora Literature, is about the past. In Vanished Lands I analyze memoirs that reflect on the historical trauma of the Holocaust in Lithuania during the Nazi occupation. I write about postmemory works of literary nonfiction by descendants of Lithuanian Nazi collaborators who reflect on inherited guilt and intergenerational trauma. I write about the collective trauma experienced by Lithuanians during the Soviet Russian occupation of Lithuania and the deportations to Siberia.⁸ I also discuss literary works that reference the Lithuanian Anti-Soviet armed resistance, forced migration, and immigration to North America. Finally, I write about how post-traumatic growth expressed through the communal activities of society, education, and culture enabled Lithuanian displaced persons to construct a cultural memory diaspora. Heritage, Connection, Writing is about the future. This is a book about the ways that contemporary transnational diaspora writers have integrated their experiences and research into their own unique visions of Lithuania that is expressed in their literary work. Heritage, Connection, Writing is a book about hope for a shared future that holds the lessons of the past in balance.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to the Research Council of Lithuania for funding my position as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Lithuanian Emigration Institute at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania (2024–26).⁹ This funding enabled me to research, conduct interviews, and write Heritage, Connection, Writing, along with three related academic articles that were published in academic journals. My postdoctoral fellowship enabled me to present my research on Lithuanian diaspora literature and life-writing at international conferences at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Yale University, and elsewhere. I’m grateful for my experience as a visiting scholar and researcher at the Center for Cultural Inquiry (Das Zentrum für Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschung ZKF) at the University of Konstanz, and at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at the University of Oxford. I am grateful for the opportunity to engage in research in the archives of the Lithuanian Research Center in Lemont, Illinois.

Thank you to Peter Lang’s Exile Studies Series Editor Andrea Hammel and to Senior Acquisitions Editor Laurel Plapp for your continued support. I’m deeply grateful to Viktoras Nakas for his deep reading and copyediting of this book.

I’m grateful to all the writers included in this book, who graciously shared their time, reflections, insights, and creative work. The growing number of published Lithuanian diaspora writers is a testimony to the endurance of memory and the connection between heritage, memory, and writing. There are many more writers of Lithuanian heritage I would have liked to have included, but unfortunately, they will need to wait for another project!

I would like to thank the Lithuanian Writers’ Union English-language publication Vilnius Review editors Marius Burokas and Saulius Vasiliauskas for first publishing 11 of the interviews that appear in this book. Thank you to Vida Kuprys, editor of the Lithuanian American journal Draugas News, for first publishing two of the interviews in this book. Thank you to the writers, editors, and publishers who granted permission to include excerpts that have been republished in this book. The list of acknowledgments below follows the order in which the interviews and excerpts appear in the book.

“A Miniature Lithuania Inside Connecticut” was first published online in Vilnius Review, July 29, 2024.

“Mother Tongue” by Jocelyn Bartkevičius was adapted from an essay published in Crab Orchard Review 21:1&2.

“Scar Tissue Surrounded by Astonishing Beauty: An Interview with Lidia Yuknavitch” was first published online by Vilnius Review, November 16, 2023, and then in print in Vilnius Review Contemporary Literature from Lithuania, 2023.

“Decompositions” (An excerpt from Resuscitations) was first published online with Vilnius Review on November 16, 2023.

“The First Note: A Conversation with Paul Jaskunas” was first published online with Vilnius Review on August 24, 2023, and then in print in Vilnius Review Contemporary Literature from Lithuania, 2023.

“Stebuklas” was first published in Bridges, Lithuanian-American News Journal November/December 2016, pp. 14–18.

“Out of the Wild: A Conversation with Ken Ilgunas” was first published in Vilnius Review, December 20, 2023.

“Out of the Wild: A Life-changing Summer among the Bears of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve” was first published in autumn 2021 by National Parks Magazine and then online in Vilnius Review, May 04, 2023.

“A Modern-Day Book Smuggler: A Conversation with Birutė Putrius” was first published in Vilnius Review, June 06, 2024.

“Becoming American” by Birutė Putrius was first published in Lost Birds, Birchwood Press, 2015.

“Lithuania is my Spiritual Home: A Conversation with Jonas Zdanys” was first published in Vilnius Review, June 16, 2024, and in print in Vilnius Review Contemporary Literature from Lithuania 2025. Vilnius: Vilnius Review, 2025.

“How I Named Myself” was first published in the Spilled Ink of Time, 2023.

“The Angels of Wine” was first published in Lithuanian Crossing, 1999.

“The Immigrants’ Prayer” was first published in Notebook Sketches, 2019.

Excerpts from When Lithuania Ruled the World, which was first published by Aukso žuvys, 2017.

“The Death of Tony: An Interview with Antanas Sileika” was first published in Vilnius Review, December 20, 2023.

An excerpt from Some Unfinished Business by Antanas Sileika, which was first published by Cormorant Books, 2023.

An excerpt from The Embrace, which was first published by Guernica Editions, 1999.

“A Conversation with Rita Gabis” was first published in Vanished Lands: Memory and Postmemory in North American Lithuanian Diaspora Literature, Peter Lang, 2023.

The interview with Daiva Markelis was first published in Vanished Lands: Memory and Postmemory in North American Lithuanian Diaspora Literature, Peter Lang, 2023.

An excerpt from White Field, Black Sheep: A Lithuanian American Life was first published by the University of Chicago Press, 2010.

“Telling Our Stories: A Conversation with Nida Dauknys” was first published by Draugas News in the October 2024 issue.

“Arrival in America,” an excerpt from Escaping Stalin’s Grasp, which was first published by Amazon Publishers, 2022.

“I am Here: An Interview with Daiva Chesonis” by Laima Vincė was first published by Vilnius Review July 19, 2023.