«Dr. Laima Vincė Sruoginis, an established author, academic, and life-long part of the North American Lithuanian diaspora, courageously faces Lithuania’s difficult historical legacy in her ground-breaking book. She researched her community’s refugee ancestors, drawing both from personal interviews and dusty academic sources, confronting uncomfortable truths.»
(Philip S. Shapiro, President, Remembering Litvaks, Inc.)
As World War II ended, refugees fled Soviet-occupied Lithuania, finding shelter in the displaced persons camps of Europe. By 1949, most had emigrated to North America. They brought with them opposing narratives about the Nazi occupation (1941–1944) when 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jewish community was annihilated. Trauma narratives were passed down to the second and third generations through collective memory. Through postmemory, cultural memory, and trauma theory, Vanished Lands analyzes literary works by North American Jewish and Lithuanian writers who speak over the silence of decades, seeking answers.
Table of Contents:
Contents: Introduction: An Ocean Away and a Century in the Past – The Literary Works and Theoretical Framework – The Holocaust by Bullets in Lithuania – Lithuania’s Anti- Soviet Armed Resistance – Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Migration from Lithuania to North America – The Role of Lithuanian Émigré Writers in Shaping the Next Generation – Two Interpretations—Two Continents: Algirdas Landsbergis, Five Posts in a Market Place – Expressions of Cultural Memory in Two Lithuanian Diaspora Memoirs: Antanas Sileika, The Barefoot Bingo Caller and Daiva Markelis, White Field, Black Sheep – Catharsis Through Memory: Samuel Bak, Painted in Words— A Memoir – Postmemory as Historical Reckoning: Rita Gabis, A Guest at the Shooters’ Banquet and Julija Šukys, Siberian Exile – Yiddish as Postmemory Portal: Ellen Cassedy, We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust – Postmemory and Historical Accuracy.
About the Author :
Dr. Laima Vincė Sruoginis earned a PhD in Humanities from Vilnius University, an MFA in Writing from Columbia University, an MFA in Nonfiction from the University of New Hampshire, and a BA in English and German Literature from Rutgers University. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, a National Endowment for the Arts grant in Literature, a PEN Translation Fund grant, an Academy of American Poets Award, and Association of the Advancement of Baltic Studies book and dissertation awards, among other honors. Writing under the name Laima Vincė, she has published over twenty books in the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom. She teaches in the English Department at the University of Southern Maine.
