Why the Kobzar Award Matters

The Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko recently awarded the first Kobzar Literary Award, which has a $25,000 prize. The New Pathway’s Olena Wawryshyn speaks to the foundation’s president, Andrew Hladyshevsky and asks him why the prize was established.

“Since the formation of the Shevchenko Foundation in 1963, we have had the opportunity to give literally hundreds of grants and assistance to writers. It has become, over the years, apparent to the foundation’s directors that what has been taught in our schools, in mainstream Canadian literature, ignores many Canadian stories and events and does not reflect the true diversity of the country.

“These stories are taken from a very selective basis – at one point it was largely Anglo Saxon, with some French. In the latter half of the 20th century, a few aboriginal stories were thrown in. And, if you look at lists of the top 100 Canadian books, it is amazing to see how few Ukrainian-Canadians are mentioned. So, there is clearly a huge gap between the historical contributions we have made in this country and what’s written about us.

“In the first half of the 20th century, it was part of the standard of mainstream media to depict Ukrainians in a derogatory way, as somewhat illiterate. If our culture was depicted, it was often derided or sneered at.

“When I was growing up, Ukrainians were depicted either as Soviet spies or some sort of Nazi collaborators in the popular mainstream media. 

“In the last 10 years, we’ve gone away from that categorization to being depicted in the historical sense as folkloric peasants who worked the land in Canada or the cleaning ladies of the rich. And, now [there’s] the Mafioso, prostitute image that people are now trying to portray Ukrainians as in Hollywood.  The problem is: if there is nothing to counter that image, what else do people have to go on about a culture that they may not know or participate in?

 “In the second half of the 20th century in Canada, in some respects, Ukrainian-Canadians began to be perceived as no longer novel or unique in a white society.  Our society now wants its visible minorities to tell their stories. So in the last 10 years we have seen a lot of writers who are aboriginal or East Indian, South East Asian, Caribbean. There are a lot of interesting stories being written, but to talk about our Ukrainian-Canadian experience and our writers is just not something that publishers thought to be interesting, largely out of ignorance due to how people were educated in our school system.

“We think that the dearth of literature in Canada portraying Ukrainian-Canadians accurately is so extreme that an award of this significance is necessary as it will allow Canadian writers, regardless of their origin, to uncover, explore and celebrate an important aspect of Canadian existence, namely stories of Ukrainian Canadians.

“Canadians are trying to figure out what we are as a nation: we often talk about the mosaic. Canada is a transitional country where there are many influences. Each one is just as valid, and no two or three should dominate. 

“Canadians have to understand who they were by understanding the stories of their people. And, Ukrainian-Canadians, after being a large presence in this country for over 100 years, deserve recognition of our stories. How do you do that? By exploring Canadian stories. That’s why we thought that the award was necessary.

“Our stories fall into the collective Canadian culture and the overall national consciousness. The Shevchenko Foundation is taking on an activist cultural role. We are trying to prime the pump and get people writing.  The Kobzar Literary Award is like an electric shock to the publishing industry to say there is an entire community that is prepared to engage the literary world and challenge folks of the literary world to come and visit our culture and write about us.

“And, for the Canadians who claim Ukrainian ancestry we are trying to give them something that is relevant in their lives, that they can pass to their children, and enjoy in their contemporary life that has a direct connection with their own experience in Canada.

“But, the goal has an aspect that is even loftier than that. The kobzar has a sacred meaning in the Ukrainian culture. The kobzars were the bards, story tellers and the purveyors of culture and stories from generation to generation. Through the Kobzar Literary Award, which uses the image of the 400-year kobzar tradition that existed in Ukraine, we want to create new Canadian kobzars or Canadian story tellers, so that by the end of this century, we might have five or six works that become fundamental must-haves on every Canadian bookshelf and on many bookshelves of the world.”