Authors

Discussion

In their Women and the Nation-State (1989), Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis have named the five most common roles women play in nation-building. First, as mothers they emerge as “biological reproducers of members of ethnic collectives”. Second, when they marry, they become the “reproducers of the boundaries of ethnic/national groups” (7). Third, as keepers of customs and traditions, they play a vital role “in the ideological reproduction of the collectivity and as transmitters of its culture” (7). Fourth, women are symbolical “signifiers of ethnic/national differences,” which can be “used in the construction, reproduction and transformation of ethnic/national categories”. Finally, they can be active “participants in national, economic, political and military struggles” (7). Usually, women perform a few roles at the same time. The socio-political agency of girls and young women, who survive traumatic events and emerge as the givers of memory, is prominent in post-1991 Ukrainian historical children’s fiction authored by popular diasporic authors, most notably Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. In this presentation, I want to study how contemporary approaches to gender influence the textual depictions of femininity and agency in selected present-day books about the Second World War and the Holodomor.