THE DEATH OF XANDA THE LION DIDN’T MAKE SENSE: TRAUMA DUE TO FORCED MIGRATION AND WAR IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN WRITING

Abstract

Recent wars, annexation, and separatist movements in Ukraine have led people to leave their homes in the search of a safe place to live. This has been overly visible after the February 2022 invasion by Russia, but has been present and had many instances since the spring of 2014. These forced migrations and their imprints on individuals, families, and subsequently, the nation are common things to see among popular trauma narratives of Ukrainian literature as the Ukrainian nation has been subjected to many events throughout centuries like the Holodomor, two world wars, and colonial oppression. As the events affected the nation as a whole rather than individuals, the traditional psychological method of reflection on the past fails to help millions of people to cope with their traumatic exposure. For this, the historical trauma idea in the context of the historical memory concept is used as a tool to analyze large-scale traumas in the sociological/cultural sense and literature acts as a tool for the much-needed talking through for the nation. This paper examines the correlation between historical trauma and forced migration events that happened between 2014-2022 by analyzing narratives about trauma and traumatized individuals in Ukrainian writing in the scope of Olena Stiazhkina’s Smert’ leva Sesila mala sens (Ukrainian: The Death of Cecil the Lion Made Sense). (All translations from Ukrainian and Russian have been done by the present author unless otherwise stated). Keywords: Historical trauma, forced migration, post-colonial trauma, Olena Stiazhkina, Smert leva Sesila mala sens