Creative Writing Professor Examines America and the Ukraine Through Literature

By Leigh DuPuy

Don't call Askold Melnyczuk a Ukrainian-American writer. Professor Melnyczuk, director of the Creative Writing Program, explains: "I consider myself an American writer, dealing with Ukrainian-American identity, history, and the present."

What it means to have a Ukranian heritage in America is the focus of his books What Is Told and Ambassadors of the Dead, which was recognized as one of the LA Time's best books of 2002. Melnyczuk continues the exploration through recent trips to his parents' homeland and lectures on the Ukraine and American literature at UMass Boston, Harvard University, and Ohio State University.

Melnyczuk's examination of the Ukraine has natural roots in his childhood and heritage. A child of parents exiled from the nation in the 1950s, he learned their language while growing up in New Jersey. He observes, "The language has given me an intimacy into the Ukraine culture and literature that would have been impossible without it."

His early literary endeavors included translating poetry from Ukrainian into English, as well as exploring themes of heritage and immigration in his own creative work. Melnyczuk first visited the Ukraine in 1990, meeting several young writers who would later become some of the nation's most prominent artists. When he returned to Kyiv in September of 2002 as the keynote speaker at a conference on American literature, he recalled, "It really moved me to hear young scholars speaking in eloquent and charmingly accented English about Jamaica Kincaid, Alice Walker, and post-colonialism."

Melnyczuk is especially interested in the intersection of American and Ukrainian culture, particularly since the Ukraine's culture had been fractured by war and strife and is now enjoying a renaissance.

"The word 'Diaspora' applies to culture as a conversation that gets fragmented by war or violence," he explains. "When the conversation gets picked up thirty years later, people find themselves struggling to finish sentences whose opening words they've long forgotten."

He believes American literature can contribute to that conversation. He says, "The picture most Ukrainians have of the United States is generally limited to what our popular media represents. That is a world I could never live in myself, and luckily most of us here don't. Literature, music, painting, and other arts help provide a far fuller portrait of what America is really like."

Melncyczuk has just completed his third novel and has begun work on several new projects, in addition to his work at UMass Boston teaching creative writing to undergraduate and graduate students in the English Department.

Image: Askold Melnyczuk is a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at UMass Boston. (Photo by Harry Brett)

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