Žydronė Kolevinskienė

Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Vytautas Magnus University

Women’s Letters: An Invisible Part of Lithuanian Diaspora History

The presentation will introduce and discuss letters written by women writers, which have been preserved in the archives of the Lithuanian Research Center in the USA (Chicago and Lemont). The accumulation, preservation and publication of writers’ epistolary legacy is an indispensable part of the history of literature, resolving collisions of a literary, social and personal nature.

Most of the letters in this archive are from the same generation of literary and cultural people. This gives insight into the experience of a generation. The correspondence highlights several aspects of importance: 1) the exile’s lot, 2) longing for the lost homeland, 3) the routine of everyday life, and 4) the assessment of literary life in the diaspora and in Soviet Lithuania. The departure from the Soviet-occupied Lithuania, the life of an exile and a refugee motivated the thematic field of most of the letters. This is not surprising, since the letters record personal experiences, which were similar for the majority of emigrants. In this context, the main function of the letter – communicative – becomes particularly important. A letter is not only a specific text with encoded information of one kind or another, but also a snapshot of a conversation. The women’s letters, most of which have not been published, represent not only the drama of a woman-creator in exile, but also that of a woman-mother.

The presentation asks how these letters add not only to the tradition of women’s literature, but also to the history of the Lithuanian diaspora. How do narratives, presentations and identities change when reading the letters of the 20th century women writers in exile?