Cherie DeLory

It’s ironic that author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch would receive the galley proof of her latest novel, Hope’s War, on September 11. Needless to say, she couldn’t focus on the editing and had to put it aside for a few days. “It made me want to vomit when I realized the timing,” says Skrypuch. “My feeling for September 11 was here we go again. More people hating other people because they’re putting them in this group and they’re not realizing that people are individuals.”

Skrypuch has made it her raison d’кtre to write compelling fiction about why people immigrate to Canada. She became inspired to write her first young adult novel, The Hunger, while writing profiles of Canadian immigrants for the now defunct Brantford historical magazine, Grand Memories. So far, her stories have been real eye-openers. In The Hunger, Paula’s near-death experience from anorexia transports her to her grandmother’s past during the Armenian genocide in Turkey, in 1915. In her latest book, Hope’s War a gifted fine arts student, Kataryna Baliuk’s life is turned upside down when she learns that her grandfather has been accused by the federal government of being a Nazi war criminal in World War II Ukraine.

The idea for Hope’s War developed before Skrypuch even knew it would be a novel. In the early 1980s, while doing her graduate studies in library science, Skrypuch, of Ukranian descent on her father’s side, noticed unusual hostility directed towards her. Not being invited to certain social gatherings was commonplace. Confused and hurt at first, she soon deduced that she was a victim of racism because of the current John Demjanjuk trial. [Demjanjuk, a Cleveland autoworker, was deported to Israel. After a lengthy show trial, he was acquitted of being “Ivan The Terrible”, a gas chamber operator at the Treblinka prison camp. Ed] This compelled her to do some research into cases involving Ukrainian Nazi war criminals.

See MARSHA’S HOPE, page 7

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“Almost subliminally the idea of what Ukrainians were had changed and it was no longer you know, good food and dancing and Easter eggs. It was all of a sudden war criminals and brutal, bestial people.”

Upon the release of Hope’s War Skrypuch feared that she would be labeled a neo-nazi and that she would never be able to write again. One year before the release of the book she was receiving hate mail because of her just released picture book, Enough. Enough is a Ukrainian folktale, set during the Famine of the 1930s. “You see there’s a whole pile of people who are famine deniers,” explains Skrypuch. “George Bernard Shaw was paid by Stalin [to write that people are dancing in the street.] Meanwhile, he’s seeing them dying. So there’s this big industry of hiding what happened and so when I had this book out and then they knew that the next book was about somebody who was accused of being a Nazi war criminal they just figured oh well, she’s a neo-nazi.”

Fortunately for Skrypuch, the response to Hope’s War has been positive. “I believe that every single person is equal,” says Skrypuch. “One person equals one person equals one person. And so for me to find stories that haven’t been told and to make a reader step into the shoes of that person and then realize that that person is a human being, that’s the reason I write. That’s it.” And even amidst the irremediable escalation of war, Skrypuch remains hopeful, true to her book’s title. “I have great faith in humanity and I believe that people are essentially good. And I don’t think that anybody, even people who are killing, I don’t think that they’re doing it out of hate. I think that they’re doing it because they’re mistaken. I mean I know that that is so naive, but I can’t help it. Maybe that’s why I write for kids.”

Skrypuch is currently writing the sequel to The Hunger, tentatively titled Nobody’s Child, to be released in the spring of 2003. She and her sister, both breast cancer survivors, are also collaborating on a book about coping strategies for survivors.

Skrypuch has been nominated for this year’s W O Mitchell Literary prize.