What each Ukrainian felt: a review of Kateryna Pylypchuk’s The War that Changed Us: Ukrainian Novellas, Poems, and Essays from 2022

Cover of The War That Changed Us Ukrainian Novellas, Poems, and Essays from 2022 by Kateryna Pylypchuk. ibidem Press 2024

While many novels, poetry collections and literature anthologies have emerged since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, very few offer readers an opportunity for healing and catharsis while examining the horrors and tragedies unfolding in the country. That is what separates Kateryna Pylypchuk’s The War that Changed Us: Ukrainian Novellas, Poems, and Essays from 2022 from other publications incorporating Ukrainians’ war experiences. Pylypchuk’s writing not only portrays the formidable Ukrainian spirit that shocked and awed the world at a pivotal moment in global history. With its stories depicting Ukrainians who decide to return to their homeland despite the war and the depiction of Ukrainian traditions like the making of motanka dolls, it encourages readers to find the best parts of humanity amid horrible circumstances. These stories and poems remind readers that hope can exist anywhere. All one has to do is search for it beneath the rubble, inside the bomb shelter, or behind a torn flag flying bravely despite the incoming missiles.

Pylypchuk’s book opens with an engrossing foreword written by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko. Yuschenko offers a poignant statement that sets the collection’s overall tone: “The war continues, and it cannot but affect each of us. It changes us.” The changes Ukrainians have experienced not only since the full-scale invasion’s beginning in 2022, but since the initial annexation and invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, are the crux of Pylypchuk’s book. However, Yuschenko also clarifies another important idea inherent in the author’s writings. That is despite “Russia’s efforts to destroy Ukraine’s identity, the Ukrainian nation is becoming even more consolidated, united, and determined to survive and flourish”. From beginning to end, the reader sees that Pylypchuk’s stories and poems authentically encapsulate the collective Ukrainian determination to celebrate an identity – and a nation – forever separate from Russia.

“Carpe Diem”, described as a “philosophical novella about the meaning of life”, is an initial gem that adeptly captures the vast changes Yuschenko describes in the foreword. The novella’s speaker communicates the swiftness at which the emotional and psychological changes manifested by describing them as so “radical” that “everything important yesterday becomes totally empty and meaningless today.” The speaker continues by describing a life totally different to the life in Kyiv which they enjoyed. Due to the war, they now live with their grandmother. The realization of just how different their life is while living with their grandmother occurs when the speaker sees their “expensive, red designer dress” on their grandmother’s clothesline. The juxtaposition of the speaker’s old life and their new one jars with the speaker so much that they realize that they had “almost let this moment slip” between their fingers. Nonetheless, the speaker asserts that “we had to continue living, even if it felt as if life was already over.” They also recognize the fact that “everything was just beginning.” Furthermore, the speaker captures realizations about another all-too real existence for Ukrainians – death’s constant presence during war. The speaker’s observations about death in their life forms a metaphysical conversation in the text. The speaker concludes the story on this metaphysical note, stating that “When we think of death, life becomes extremely real. When we realize that the soul is immortal, death becomes a part of our lives.” Here, the speaker develops a “death-positive” attitude, but rather than developing that attitude over time, the speaker is forced to develop it because of their circumstances.

Also inherent in Pylypchuk’s stories and poems is the idea of generational trauma and the inheritance of that trauma. The story “Holodomor” blends the past with the present as it examines the emotional and psychological trauma inherited by generation after generation of Ukrainians. While events like the Holodomor only recently entered the western consciousness, they have long been sources of family and national secrets. The story is immensely powerful because the past blurs with the present as a mother and children escape the war and the mother, Maryna, recalls her family’s own history. Shock and disbelief permeate the piece as Maryna realizes that she could “hardly accept the fact that after almost a hundred years, russia was again stealing and burning Ukrainian bread, starving and shooting Ukrainians—simply destroying the very essence of the Ukrainian nation, destroying people, children, women, the old and the young”. Maryna’s sentiment is relatable to those who are Ukrainian or those who have Ukrainian roots. Since the full-scale invasion’s beginning, millions of native Ukrainians and diasporic Ukrainians have expressed similar emotions, frequently drawing on their own families’ histories in order to process current events.

The necessity to maintain and preserve a Ukrainian identity in the face of Russian aggression is another key cultural idea Pylypchuk effectively communicates. “Motanka” serves as the collection’s primary example. Motanka dolls are an ancient Ukrainian tradition. The dolls are considered family talismans that offer protection, and they are crafted by winding fabrics together. They have no face, and instead the dolls have multicoloured threads that form a cross shape. In Pylypchuk’s story, the act of winding the fabric to form the doll is a sacred ritual of preservation and meditation. The unidentified speaker repeats the phrase “I shall wind,” which takes on a prayer-like tone in the poem. The repetition also creates a cyclical sense in the poem that recreates the act of passing traditions from one generation to the other. Other important symbols associated with Ukrainian culture deepen the story’s meaning. The speaker begs the “sweet little dolly” to “take good care” of their warrior, and they prayerfully command, “May the streams of red viburnum on your face become the blood of our damned enemies.” Red viburnum (also called kalyna in Ukrainian culture) is the national symbol of Ukraine, and it has long been used to represent resistance to political oppression and foreign dominance. The speaker also references “an embroidered pattern” on the doll’s sleeve, where “each embroidered cross-stitch bears a code for my message” – an allusion to the Ukrainian vyshyvanky (embroidered blouses) and rushynyky (embroidered towels) traditions that, like motanka dolls, are seen as cultural symbols and talismans against evil.

In essence, Pylypchuk’s writings are cultural artifacts themselves. They embody the people’s spirit and vast, unique traditions that make Ukrainians and Ukrainian culture beautiful and sovereign. Her words – much like the historic writings of Taras Shevchenko and the contemporary ones of Serhiy Zhadan – capture a moment unlike any other seen in history. Most of all, Pylypchuk creates a concerted, necessary moment of empathy and unprecedented reflective pause, which challenges readers to consider what it means to be human.

The War That Changed Us Ukrainian Novellas, Poems, and Essays from 2022 by Kateryna Pylypchuk. ibidem Press 2024

Nicole Yurcaba is a Ukrainian American of Hutsul/Lemko origin. A poet and essayist, her poems and reviews have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Atlanta Review, Seneca Review, New Eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University, and is Humanities faculty at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College in the United States. She also serves as a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Southern Review of Books.

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Russia's invasion of Ukraine, social response, Ukraine, Ukraine at war, Ukrainian literature