Dissertation Grant Report from Laima Vince

AABS is pleased to recognize Laima Vincė for the completion of her dissertation “Memory and Postmemory in the Writing of North American Writers of Lithuanian Descent,” for which she received the AABS Dissertation Grant in the 2021-2022 cycle.

Dr. Vincė is a featured speakers of the “Baltic Literature at a Crossroads” plenary during the 28th Biennial AABS Conference on Baltic Studies.

The Impact of an Award: Report from Laima Vincė

After the completion of her dissertation, Laima Vincė submitted a reflection to AABS.
We thank her for her permission to publish her thoughts, which have been lightly edited.

Four days after Russia invaded Ukraine, in the ancient halls of Vilnius University, I defended my dissertation, Memory and Postmemory in the Writing of North American Writers of Lithuanian Descent. We were all still in shell shock over the brutal invasion of Ukraine, but Lithuania was already preparing to shelter and aid Ukrainian refugees. At the same time, Omicron was raging. Even the head of defense committee became ill with Covid-19 and had to conduct the defense proceedings from her sickbed over Zoom. Still, after my hour-long presentation, and after each of the five members of the defense committee presented their analysis and I answered their questions, the committee voted unanimously to grant me a PhD in Humanities from Vilnius University.

I would not have made it to my defense without the generous support I received from the Association of the Advancement of Baltic Studies. The organization’s support was not only financial (and badly needed and much appreciated during the year of pandemic lockdown that defined the final years of my doctoral research) but also intellectual, collegiate, and scholarly. Knowing that the work I was doing and that the interviews I was conducting with North American writers of Lithuanian descent was considered valuable by other Baltic scholars kept me going even when I faced resistance and adversity from Vilnius University due to the interdisciplinary and innovative aspects of my work.

The AABS dissertation grant enabled me to travel from Lithuania to the United States in the spring and summer of 2021 to interview Lithuanian-American and Lithuanian-Canadian writers for my dissertation and for the academic monograph that I am writing based on the research and conclusions of my dissertation. The AABS dissertation grant bought me the time I needed to keep researching and writing after my Vilnius University stipend expired in September 2020, precisely at a time when the economy in Lithuania, where I was living, was dire due to the pandemic.

What struck me during my dissertation defense was how one of the professors on the doctoral defense committee, who had initially been skeptical of the concept of postmemory and how my work applied postmemory to the collective memory and historical trauma of Lithuanian World War II displaced persons and their descendants, admitted that she now realized how my findings were relevant in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Lithuanian postmemory expresses itself in the second and third generation through their act of writing novels, memoirs, collections of poetry, and literary nonfiction on the collective historical trauma experienced by Lithuanians during World War II – Soviet occupation, Nazi occupation, deportations to Siberia and Tajikistan, the postwar armed resistance. Although it’s clear that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is motivated by acquiring natural gas reserves in Eastern Ukraine and other resources, the narrative that Putin constructed to justify the invasion to the Russian nation is based on a postmemory interpretation of the Russian nation’s historical experience of World War II and the alleged non-existence of the Ukrainian nation. Russia’s World War II narrative of Russian Soviets bravely fighting Nazis (the Nazis for their purposes include Ukrainians and Balts) is a powerful aspect of this current war’s postmemory narrative, which has a deep emotional effect on Russian people. Vladimir Putin’s own memory narrative based on the cultural trauma experience of his parents during World War II shapes his propaganda narrative that today Russia is fighting Nazis in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine is drawing on the wellsprings of cultural and collective memory to unite as a people and fight back. These hero and Nazi narratives may seem inscrutable to those outside of the culture and region, but read in terms of postmemory, they are understandable, if not justifiable. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, I saw my research as an exploration of how history is documented and interpreted through literature. However, after Russia’s war against Ukraine began I saw how postmemory plays a deep role in a nation’s narrative and leads to real-life outcomes. By choosing democracy and independence from Russia, Ukraine is challenging the Russian postmemory narrative, which has its roots in World War II and earlier. I learned through my research, wide reading, analysis, and conducting interviews that postmemory is deeply emotional and personal. When a postmemory narrative is challenged, the reaction may be irrational, and that is because postmemory is linked to familial memory and expressions of collective culture.

Although the bibliography I compiled of literature written by North American writers of Lithuanian descent identified over a hundred works of literature published in the United States and Canada that are based on postmemory themes and narratives, my disseration focuses on five memoirs. These texts serve as memory narratives because the memoirists narrate their own life stories and individual and familial trauma experiences. Additionally, they research and write about the impact of Lithuanian historical trauma (the Holocaust) and Lithuanian cultural trauma (deportations to Siberia, World War II, the postwar experience, the refugee experience, immigration) and how that trauma inheritance has impacted them and their families. Through the process of writing their stories intertwined with their experiences of collective memory narratives, they reflect upon the impact of those historical events on their ancestors, themselves, and their descendants. Their work reflects on individual, familial, intergenerational, historical, and cultural trauma. They also reflect on cultural memory in the North American Lithuanian diaspora community. They employ techniques of postmemory to recreate historical and cultural trauma events that they know initially from family stories and then from subsequent archival research and interviews. All five memoirists – Samuel Bak, Antanas Sileika, Daiva Markelis, Rita Gabis, Julija Šukys – embark on rite of return journeys to Lithuania after independence that lead to catharsis and post-traumatic growth on an individual and creative level. Additionally, these memoirs emphasize the importance of understanding the links between the cultural and historical traumas of Christian Lithuanians and Lithuanian Jews, thus rebuilding bridges destroyed through the historical trauma of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

Although significant research has been conducted on the generation of Lithuanian diasporic writers who wrote literary works in Lithuanian published in North America, few researchers or literary critics have studied literature written by North American writers of Litvak and Lithuanian descent who write in English. No researcher has written about this body of work collectively nor considered it through the lens of postmemory or trauma theory. Until I wrote this dissertation, the literary output of North American writers of Lithuanian descent had not been studied together as a cultural expression within the context of North American literature or Lithuanian literature. The five memoirs analyzed in my dissertation have not been regarded together critically as a group.

Svaja Worthington, academic, life writer and founder of the Little Lithuanian Museum in Chugiak, Alaska

©Laima Vincė, June 2021

The preoccupation in the memoirs with identity, cultural trauma, historical trauma, cultural memory, and postmemory are not an anomaly, and not the isolated topical concerns of five individual writers, but reflect the focus of works of literature that belong to a growing body of literary work written in English and published in North America that concerns itself with Lithuanian postmemory, memory, cultural trauma, and historical trauma topics.

Writers of the second and third postmemory generations dare to take on sensitive emotionally difficult topics that were taboo in the Lithuanian diaspora community, such as moral accountability for those Lithuanians who collaborated with the German occupiers (1941–1944) during the Holocaust in Lithuania and who later found safe harbor in the United States and Canada, where they lived out the remainder of their lives peacefully. This is especially true of the thematic focus and preoccupation of the two memoirs by Gabis and Šukys.

Writing in English about Lithuania, these writers translate their postmemory experience for an audience of North American readers. Through their literary work they strive to create a context to Lithuanian historical trauma and cultural trauma for an audience of North American readers. This audience of readers take on the roles of witness and listener for the writers.

Literary styles range from writing rich with survival humor, irony, and the absurd (Bak, Sileika, Markelis) to reflective, soul-searching, sensitive prose (Gabis, Šukys). With the exception of Bak, who was born in present-day Lithuania, these writers were born on the North American continent, and completed their educations, started their careers, and raised their families in Canada or the United States. Therefore, the influences of North American culture on their narratives are strong. Their literary work is predominantly influenced by North American stylistics and North American (and Jewish) humor. These writers are influenced more by the literary canon and traditions of the English-speaking world.

These memoirs invite readers to reflect upon individual and familial trauma within the greater context of historical and cultural trauma. There are powerful life lessons to be gleaned from reflecting on the experiences of these five writers. Their memoirs may help members of the second and third postmemory generations of the Lithuanian diaspora understand the trauma experienced by the first generation and, hopefully, integrate that trauma. An analysis of these memoirs may help contemporary Lithuanians better understand the cultural trauma and postmemory experience of North American Lithuanian writers of Lithuanian descent.

Furthermore, a lack of understanding, and empathy toward the trauma memory of the North American Lithuanian diaspora left unexplored can lead to a further split between the descendants of people who were once one nation during the interwar period of Lithuanian independence. Postmemory literature that addresses collective cultural trauma opens necessary dialogue that may lead to healing. Another important goal is linking and understanding the historical and cultural trauma of two groups – Christian Lithuanian and Lithuanian Jewish – to work towards healing and posttraumatic growth.

One of the outcomes of my dissertation is that realization that when the expression of cultural and historic trauma is not studied, the damaging effects of a pact of silence within society, and within families, may continue to erode society. Recognizing trauma is the first step towards healing trauma. By identifying trauma in these literary texts, this dissertation opens a greater dialogue on the nature of trauma and how cultural and historical trauma impacts individuals and the collective society both in Lithuania and in the Lithuanian diasporic communities abroad.