Intersections

As a part of my autoethnographical process for this project, I wanted to include some reflections on how reclaiming my Ukrainian roots interacts with other parts of my life. This process doesn’t start and stop with being Ukrainian, after all, but touches on other factors in my life that impact how I can achieve reclamation. A major intersection that comes up, for example, is that I am part of the diaspora, as explained previously on my Family History page. It fundamentally changes where my entry point is, how I learn about Ukrainian culture and identity, and how I interact with the broader Ukrainian community. Moreover, this means that there is no easy way to reclaim my heritage, but instead a continuous journey that began years ago and will undoubtedly continue for many years to come.

This page will reflect on how being a part of the diaspora has impacted my journey as well as whether my nationality has been an influential factor. I will also briefly address the role my queer identity has played in this process, since it has influenced my relationship with the Ukrainian community and culture to some extent. Although there is certainly a sense of conflict among these facets of my identity, the goal of this reflection is to acknowledge this conflict, come to terms with it, and continue forward with my reclamation honestly.

The Ukrainian Diaspora

A diaspora is a very particular beast.

Without giving too much away about myself, I didn’t grow up in a location that was particularly favored by Eastern European diasporas. My experience within the diaspora throughout my childhood was mostly limited to my own family. And it was only in my teenage years, during the times when we could afford the internet bill, that I started speaking with Ukrainians in Ukraine and Canada online. When I finally backtracked my grandmother’s secrets and discovered our Ukrainian roots, it was on my own, without a community to immediately turn to for guidance. So, it was a different and isolated experience compared to, say, those in the Ukrainian community in Edmonton, which has full organizations, language classes, dance troupes, a cultural heritage museum, etc. It was when I started digitally befriending Ukrainians in Canada that I truly grasped that there is a vibrant Ukrainian diaspora to turn to… elsewhere.

Outside my own family, my in-person experiences with the Ukrainian diaspora really began when I entered university and its Slavic studies department in 2017. I took a course on Ukrainian culture during my first year in university and started taking language classes the following school year. I spoke with my Ukrainian teachers – one of whom was even from the Ivano-Frankivsk oblast herself! – and attended Ukrainian events when I could. I started speaking with other Ukrainians, including embroiderers, pysanka writers, etc. My web of contacts only grew from there. I was never turned away from the community.

No, my inclusion in the Ukrainian community there felt natural enough; it was understood that I was a more disconnected member of the diaspora trying to figure the culture and language out. For the community around me, it was enough that I knew some of my family history and was willing to learn more about the culture. It didn’t occur to me how relaxed this inclusion was until a year after starting college, when I encountered the Lithuanian diaspora.

During the summer of 2018, I had the opportunity to study Lithuanian and enthusiastically took it. One of my classmates was an older woman, the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants who fled to the US after WW2. She often traveled to Lithuania to visit family, had grown up with the Lithuanian culture, and had been studying the language for many years… but hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it. This lack loomed over her head and caused immense insecurity in her identity, which I didn’t understand at first. Was it not enough that she was doing all these other things to connect with her Lithuanian roots? Besides, languages are so difficult to learn without living in the country. Wasn’t this one “failure” understandable? But, one day, I saw the cause of her stress myself. A guest lecturer came to speak to our class. He was a member of the diaspora himself and was very stern about one rule: You cannot be Lithuanian without speaking Lithuanian fluently. My friend had been barred from the culture she grew up in and loved over this one thing.

I have compared the Ukrainian diaspora with that experience since then, but it has been so rare for me to find this same hostility and identity gatekeeping. Since 2016, I have spoken to Ukrainians in the US, Canada, Finland, Estonia, Poland, etc. We speak in English or what little Ukrainian I can manage. We speak about the culture or current events (the aftermath of the 2015 invasion or the 2022 war) and how we have to keep calling attention to Ukraine’s survival. For those who do speak the language, they almost never bring up learning Ukrainian to me, and when I mention my very primitive speaking skills, they assure me with some form of “You can learn it eventually, and let me know if you need help.” I never faced the ultimatum found in some parts of the Lithuanian diaspora, or was told that I had to first pass some exam in order to claim my Ukrainian identity. Of course, a lot of this openness makes sense when we consider the vast, and oftentimes forced, nature of the Ukrainian diaspora – the existence of the diaspora is a well-known side effect of ongoing settler colonialism. So, I’ve typically found acceptance and inclusion from others in the diaspora, even while still learning the ropes.

This open inclusion has been reaffirmed over and over since I first started reaching out. In 2022, in the months following the war’s outbreak, I noticed Ukrainians (and even Ukrainian organizations) post announcements for the 2nd / 3rd generation diaspora members looking to reconnect with their heritage: you are welcome to learn more and join the community. When I search through modern Ukrainian culture online, I find countless projects that actively include voices from the diaspora, such as Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora. Diasporiana, an online library of works by the Ukrainian diaspora and owned by the Classical Private University (Zaporizhia), is an incredible example of Ukraine remembering its diaspora. When I visited Ukraine for fieldwork, I saw diaspora art and books proudly kept in even the regional museums. In the Spring of 2024, the National Museum in Kolomyia opened an exhibit specifically displaying the works of the diaspora. Time and time again, I have seen how Ukraine remembers and treasures its diaspora, and how Ukrainians have welcomed people like me back.

Not that this relationship is one-sided at all, even when we only consider the context of the war. In the weeks following 24 February 2022, I attended protests, sat in rushed lectures held by my university, and joined in donation campaigns alongside my fellow diaspora members from different waves and generations. We know that the Ukrainian diaspora has rushed to support and advocate for Ukrainians since the war began. The diaspora has played an important role in raising international awareness of the war and serving as a first point of contact for refugees. This has been accompanied by members of the diaspora speaking out about how their Ukrainian identity has been strengthened since the start of the war, with several of them expressing thoughts that I have had for years. The diaspora largely remembers its roots and loves Ukraine still, especially in times of need.

As noted above, my integration into the Ukrainian community and culture had already begun in earnest a few years before the war. I began this process the moment that I realized that my grandmother had hid our Ukrainian roots from us and her reasons. Ukraine has its own culture and identity, but any community can be threatened by colonization. The fact that my family fell into this and carried shame around our heritage for decades was enough of a wake-up call for me. I can never fully repair the break in our heritage and identity caused by Polish and Russian settler colonialism, but I can mend it the best that I can with the tools that I have learned in the proceeding years. For Ukrainian culture to now survive future hardships, there must be a concerted effort, and that cannot stop at just Ukraine; the diaspora has a role to play in Ukraine’s well-being, and I feel a responsibility to be a part of that.

My beginning in the Ukrainian diaspora may have been relatively late, but I have worked hard to learn and participate. And I am very glad to say that the Ukrainian community has always accepted and encouraged me. At this point, I tie much of my own identity to the Ukrainian diaspora.

My Nationality

To be clear, I’m transparent: I’m from the United States. Though, to be honest, I don’t find my exact nationality to be particularly relevant or important, especially during the last couple of years.

However, some people feel that my nationality is relevant to them. To be frank, when I have spoken about my Ukrainian identity and work with the community in the past couple of years, it has annoyed the more nationalist-minded Americans. They like to bring up my nationality as a sort of Gotcha! moment, wherein they get to insist that my nationality somehow matters and must be acknowledged. It matters to them, so it must matter to me.

So, let’s quickly learn why it doesn’t matter here.

First of all, I have always felt disconnected with a sense of “American identity.” As I have stated elsewhere, I ended up fitting into Hansen’s law of return: “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” In other words, the 2nd generation in an immigrant family wishes to assimilate into the culture, while the 3rd generation wants to reconnect with their grandparents’ roots. I would certainly dispute that this is a law, as everyone is different, but the general pattern for the 3rd generation matched my situation. I spent my young adulthood researching and reconnecting with my grandmother’s heritage, pushing the US aside. My mom, despite liking US culture, was never actually patriotic, so I was allowed to actively avoid US indoctrination. The resulting disconnection works really well when you simply fail to understand what it means to be an American in the first place. I have a hard time saying definitively that I’m American – a sentiment that people who personally get to know me tend to echo.

Second, when I began learning about the Ukrainian diaspora, it was in the Ukrainian-Canadian sense. The reason for this is pretty well known: the largest and most vibrant Ukrainian diasporic community has, historically, been centered in Canada. Those who grew up in Australia, the US, etc. are aware that their communities are not as active as that in Canada, and we tend to look to the communities in Canada for knowledge and a digital community. Even when speaking to Ukrainians in the US, a lot of them were either from Ukraine or Canada – I haven’t spoken to many Ukrainian-Americans, and I have very little sense of what this identity actually means. Hell, my BA thesis focused on the Ukrainian diaspora in Estonia, based on my own fieldwork. My first Vyshyvanka Day was celebrated with the Ukrainian community in Estonia. I know a lot about the Ukrainian communities in Canada and Estonia. Which is all to say that, well, the US just doesn’t really play a large part in my reclamation of my Ukrainian heritage.

And finally, my being from the US doesn’t tend to matter to other people. Don’t get me wrong, I’m honest when tour guides, etc. ask where I’m from. But when I have actual conversations with people, it’s often ignored, especially when it comes to my heritage. This has held true in Estonia. When older women find out that I can speak some Estonian, they insist I’m Estonian diaspora. Where I grew up doesn’t matter to them; they want to know my actual roots. When I’m sitting in public with other foreign friends of mine, they are targeted by Estonians as foreigners who they want to talk to, while I sit ignored. I have heard time and time again that I have, once again, been mistaken as an Estonian. And when I went to Ukraine? Well, I still got mistaken as a national Estonian. I tell people that I’m from the US for the sake of transparency, but this would get brushed off. This even happened when I was connected with my Ukrainian relatives for the first time – I was introduced to them as Estonian-Ukrainian.

Well, what to do? I’m certainly not complaining! But these factors continuously diminish my sense of importance in my US background, which frankly, I personally encourage.

So, no, you won’t find me calling myself a Ukrainian-American. For now, I’m satisfied with personally identifying as a member of the Ukrainian diaspora, nothing more.

The Queer Experience

This was originally going to be a separate page. I had drafts for it and everything. But something about writing one’s more negative experiences as a nonbinary lesbian down and sharing them publicly is unsettling. I still feel like this aspect to be acknowledged, though, because it is a conflict that a lot of Ukrainians continue to face. So, I have summarized my thoughts here.

I love Ukrainian culture. I want a better future for Ukraine. At the same time, a lot of Ukrainians are queerphobic, and that carries into the diaspora often enough. Luckily, I have met some very accepting members of the diaspora in recent years, but this is not always the case. I’m not out to most of my family; it’s something that my mom knows to keep hidden from our more conservative relatives. When I began studying Ukrainian, my teacher told me to never expect the language to adjust to nonbinary identities. And when I was in Ukraine, I was asked whether I had a husband yet, followed up by reassurance that it will happen. The reassurance is appreciated, but no, a husband specifically is not in my future. Was I going to correct that? Certainly not. I know well enough that homophobia is embedded in Western Ukrainian society, so it was best to be careful and not make anything tense.

To always ignore queerphobia and its impact doesn’t help anything (even if it is, in the short-term, much easier). While going through this reclamation journey, I still must ask myself: What does it mean to be Ukrainian and queer? How does my being queer impact my relationship with the culture? After all, I do my best to listen to queer elders first. So, I cannot just ignore the fact that parts of Ukrainian culture, like the vyshyvanka, have played a part in Ukrainian queerphobia in the past few decades. Even if I love Ukrainian embroidery, this is a stain on its history that I feel the need to acknowledge. There is still so much work to be done for queer rights in Ukraine, and for as long as this remains true, I think it’s best to continue amplifying queer Ukrainian experiences and voices when I can.

It is, of course, very much worth noting that Ukrainian attitudes have begun to shift in a positive direction since Euromaidan and even more so since the war began. Queer folks in Ukraine have increasingly felt comfortable wearing the vyshyvanka for themselves, which has been helped along by pro-LGBT+ rights campaigns. A recent culmination of this has been a queer Ukrainian organization issuing vyshyvanka shirts with the embroidery design switched to the colors of the rainbow Pride flag. Aspects of a national culture, like the vyshyvanka, hold the power to include or exclude marginalized groups, and it’s a relief to find that there are now earnest efforts to reclaim the vyshyvanka and other Ukrainian culture among the queer community. I hope that this healthier relationship with the wider Ukrainian culture continues to progress for the queer community in the future.

So, I think I will end here on the positive note that, with each year, I see more and more hope among the queer community in Ukraine, and I find much of the diaspora to be following suit. The previous stain on the vyshyvanka will, hopefully, one day be just a memory.