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In Ekaterinoslav, award-winning author Jane Yolen writes about her father's family journey from a small shtetl in the Ukraine in the early part of the twentieth century, through the Ellis Island portal, to a home in New Haven, Connecticut. Her father, only seven at the time, grew up wholly American and never spoke to her of the family's passage. Here, through these brilliant poems, she pieces together a history of her family.
Her poems are a celebration of passage, of ritual lost and then found, of a family who left a land of custom and arrived at a place of opportunity. As she says in the poem "Round Frame":
All those years Ekaterinoslav
was lost to me, when I could have celebrated
Ukrainian winters, learned words of love,
fashion, passion, paternity;
how to season the fish with pepper, not sugar;
how to cut the farfl from flat sheets of dough.
All I had was New Haven.
Until she comes to understand with the words of the final poem, "Rebirth"
I have written these
poems as resurrection.
I have molded these words
to reinvent moment and memory.
I have crafted these short lines
for the ones who come after,
my children's children.
For them I've created,
recreated really,
a lifetime,
a country,
a shtetl,
a home.
I can do no more.
Jane Yolen, often called the Hans Christian Andersen of America, is the author of over three hundred books, including Owl Moon and The Devil's Arithmetic, many of them prize-winners, including the Jewish Library Association's top honor.
“What is the hunger, so fundamental, to know the generations long gone who gave birth to us—to know intimately their stories, their pogram heartache, their immigrant pluck? Jane Yolen remembers, imagines, invents her shtetl bubbies and greenhorn zaydies, her bootleg uncles, vividly resurrecting them with insight, vision, compassion, love. We sit at the table wide-eyed, enchanted by her gift inherited from them—the well-told story.”—Merle Feld, author of A Spiritual Life: Exploring the Heart and Jewish Tradition and Finding Words
“Jane Yolen’s Ekaterinoslav is a rich salmagundi of speculative autobiography and imagined reminiscence, marinated in compelling verse. The reader is pulled along inexorably with an unforgettable cast of kinfolk through fortune and folly from an 1870s Ukrainian shtetl to Ellis Island. Ekaterinoslav is as beautiful a celebration of life—and lament for death—as you would expect from one of the world's foremost storytellers.”—J. Patrick Lewis, U.S. Children's Poet Laureate (2011-2013)
“When death, 'that old interrupter,' claims Jane Yolen's father, she learns that he was born in Ekaterinoslav, not New Haven and named Wolf, not Will. A poet's job is to turn facts into truths, and Yolen, a master storyteller, does this beautifully in this memoir-in-verse, which brings to life another time and place that no longer exists, but thanks to Yolen, will now never be forgotten. I was mesmerized by these moving, heartfelt poems.”—Lesléa Newman, author of October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard
“Jane Yolen’s new work, Ekaterinoslav, is a moving memoir, part family story, part immigrant fable. The strong narrative pull of the poems propels the reader forward wanting to know what will happen next with each personality deftly captured in the sparest descriptions of a few sharp lines. The shifting mood of the story weaves gracefully through the poems, skillfully translating historical facts and family truths. The final poem offers a personal, powerful conclusion, as Yolen moves from the past to the present using poetry 'to reinvent moment and memory.'”—Sylvia M. Vardell, Ph.D., author of Poetry Aloud Here and The Poetry Teacher's Book of Lists
"Jane Yolen knows the outlines, not the details, or even many of the major steps of her family’s journey, and she uses the imagination that has helped her create more than 300 children’s books as well as her family trove of old photographs to create a poetic re-creation that, in unrhymed, very loose-metered lines, makes a splendid piece of theater of the mind, distinctive yet universal, based on one of America’s foundational legends."—Ray Olsen, Booklist
Her books and stories have won an assortment of awards--two Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoetic awards, two Christopher Medals, a nomination for the National Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award, among others. She is also the winner (for body of work) of the Kerlan Award, the World Fantasy Assn. Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Catholic Library’s Regina Medal. Six colleges and universities have given her honorary doctorates. If you need to know more about her, visit her website at: www.janeyolen.com
Table of Contents
A Note from the Poet
EKATERINOSLAV 1873-1913
Picture This
The Pale
Cossacks
Pogrom
Spinster
Cholera
Names
Red Hair, Blue Eyes
Round Frame
Furrows
Photograph
PASSAGE 1912-1914
First Wave: Lou Leaving Home
Lou Going Ahead
Second Wave: The Girls Hold Hands Across the Sea
Manifests <2 photographs of actual manifests>
Third Wave: Second Class
Liberty Enlightening the World
Ellis Island Mathematics
Declaration of Intention
Passage Through the Great Hall
Admitted
GREENHORNS 1914-1939
Dapper Dan
Milliner
Middle Class
Bottle
Greenhorns
Night School
Beyond the Pale
Cousins
Furs
Will
Rebirth
Glossary