In Search of Memory: A Review of Olesya Yaremchuk’s Our Others (2020, Ibidem)

Olesya Yaremchuk, a journalist and member of PEN Ukraine, trekked more than 11,000 kilometers to talk to people from different national minorities (including Romanians, Hungarians, Jews, and Crimean Tatars) that have long lived in Ukraine. The journalist visited the most remote corners of the country to document how these minority groups live today and what they remember about their pasts. The result of Yaremchuk’s travels is the book Our Others: Stories of Ukrainian Diversity, which includes 14 texts about each of the groups. In 2020, Ibidem Press published the English translation by Zenia Tompkins and Hanna Leliv as part of the press’ Ukrainian Voices series. In addition to Our Others, Ibidem has published books by Ukrainian politicians, diplomats, historians, and activists, including Mykola Riabchuk, Volodymyr Yermolenko, Olexander Scherba, and Marta Dyczok. The purpose of these books is “to make non-Ukrainian readers familiar with how some prominent Ukrainians approach, view and assess their country’s development and position in the world”.

Olesya Yaremchuk is one of the few journalists in Ukraine who actively writes feature stories. Her résumé is impressive: previously, she was the curator of Samovydets, an all-Ukrainian competition of feature reporting; a project coordinator at Tempora publishing house (2015-2017); and the editor-in-chief at Choven, a publishing house specializing in reporting and documentary literature (2017-2019). She also held internships at the German public state-owned international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and the German daily newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt. Our Others is the author's first full-fledged book: before its publication, her texts were included in various anthologies.

Our Others contains the testimonies of people from minority groups devoted to preserving their traditions, creating a special universe of multicultural diversity. Big and small Ukrainian cities alike are proud of this diversity, but at the same time, it is constantly receding further and further into the past. And that is why it is so necessary to read this book. As the poet and the literary critic Ostap Slyvynsky noted in the preface: “This is what this Ukraine of ours looks like today; this is its scale model, so to speak: a gray hodge-podge of typical Soviet construction amid which only the most attentive eye will discern something other, left intact in this new and ‘ordered’ landscape either by someone’s negligence or willful stubbornness”. It is not easy to see these features, but once you notice them, you will not be able to stop doing so, and inevitably begin to listen more carefully to the stories told by older generations, or look at the contours of the frescoes on dilapidated buildings...

Our Others is a collection of classic feature stories in which the past and the present speak for themselves. This genre of reporting is unique in that the reader has the opportunity to hear an interesting story directly from the words of an eyewitness, no matter how tragic, contradictory, or emotional it may be. And there is plenty of emotions to be found in this book. Yaremchuk attaches great importance to the description of life, religion, customs, and traditions of each of the people she visits. By doing so, she provides the appropriate color and language to each of them. Many of them periodically use Russian and add some words and sayings from their native languages, especially when talking about national cuisine, such as: ekmek - Turkish flatbread; mandza - a potato and vegetable dish, sometimes with meat added; peynir - brined white cheese; and parvarda - traditional Uzbek sweets. The journalist's presence on the scene also ensures the "sound" of her stories. This can be felt, for example, in the text "Music played on wooden spoons", in which Yaremchuk describes in detail the process of creating wooden spoons. The reader can feel the vibrations coming from the hands of the masters making them.

Other important topics raised by Yaremchuk are the negative stereotypes these minority groups must live with, and the younger generation’s struggle with assimilating -- such as trying to pass exams in the Ukrainian language when it is not the primary language spoken in their home environment. When Yaremchuk writes about Roma children in "Olha Petrivna, the Baron", she emphasizes their social isolation: “Their imaginations are void of anything other than a mother who smokes and curses at everyone at full volume". Or: “What's the typical reaction to a Roma woman when she enters some government office?’ the heroine asks angrily, ‘She's kicked right out’." It is possible to live with one’s traditions in spite of people's aversion to otherness, and Olga Petrovna shows this by her example. But how many will be willing to endure what is a long and sometimes fruitless struggle? "The Soviet Union did everything in its power to assimilate nationalities and ethnic minority groups," Yaremchuk reminds us. Many decades later, we clearly see the results of this policy.

Yaremchuk quotes or makes references to articles from other media, historical studies, books, and films in her reporting. When we talk about the genre of feature reporting, this technique is one of the main ones that distinguish it from fiction. In addition to hearing and feeling Olesya's texts, some of them can also be seen. Serhiy Polezhaka, a videographer and co-founder of New Cave Media, created five short video stories for the book, and took part in five of Yaremchuk’s trips. You can watch the videos with English subtitles at nashi-inshi.choven.org. Such multimedia projects are the future of feature reporting. It allows journalists to successfully combine all the technological capabilities available to them in order to create a story that involves all of the senses. The effectiveness and quality of this project was highly appreciated by the international professional community. In 2018, the media project Our Others was nominated for the ADAMI Media Prize, an award for journalists from the EU's Eastern Partnership countries.

Our Others. Stories of Ukrainian Diversity is not just a series of reports on national minorities. This book is primarily about the disappearance of memory. In a fresh and original voice, Olesya Yaremchuk tells the stories of ethnic communities in Ukraine that are on the verge of oblivion: some go abroad, others assimilate. In any case, their numbers decrease with every passing year.  Will the next generation preserve the customs and traditions of its predecessors? And most importantly - are we Ukrainians ready to accept and celebrate "our others"?

Reviewed by Liliia Shutiak
Translated from the Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan