When Luba Leaves Home
 Irene Zabytko
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 2003 Algonquin Books
 ISBN: 1565123328

A RebeccasReads author featured in
Authors & Books

Stories from Chicago's Ukrainian Village.

This is Irene Zabytko's second book, her first The Sky Unwashed, about the Grandmothers of the Ukraine who returned to the environs of Chernobyl, affected me profoundly.

In When Luba Leaves Home, the author offers stories from her neighborhood, based on second generation immigrant Luba's life before she heads out into greater America, where she drops her Ukrainian name for the less attention-getting Linda. Discarding her heritage, however, proves rather more complicated.

I loved the vitality of the stories of the DP - Displaced People from the Ukraine who brought from the “Old Country”, like family heirlooms, their old angers&fears, to settle into the “promised land”. One of the taunts of those who succeed to those whiners who are failing is that if they don't like it here, go back! It is only those who are brash or brave enough to grab the opportunities that come their way & make new lives for themselves, who rise above the self-pity, inertia, envy, & by fair means or foul, set about tasting the American Dream.

Having been an immigrant myself, alighting from the train in Chicago just a week shy of my 22nd birthday, these stories touched my heart & memory on several levels. True, I did have the English; true I was a skilled office worker; true I was a healthy, relatively “stacked” young woman, however, those were the only advantages I had over many of Irene Zabytko's characters. I had no family, no community, no neighborhood to fit into to ease the homesickness -- not that I felt much having left my “Old Country” where I had few roots & certainly little sense of inheritance. I left entirely of my own volition with every intention of starting a new life.

We follow Luba/Linda as she enters her majority, yearning to dive into the American mainstream, even as her family, culture & sense of duty keep pulling her leash.

The stories are: My Black Valiant; The Celebrity; Saint Sonya; The Last Boat; Obligation; Pani Ryhotska in Love; Lavender Soap; The Prodigal Son Enters Heaven, & John Mars, All-American. It could have gone on for twice as long!

If undiluted immigrant life & the ways of new Americans interest you, then you will enjoy Irene Zabytko's When Luba Leaves Home.

Irene Zabytko's speaking engagements & workshops can be found at Authors Sightings. She is featured in our Authors & Books & do check out my Interview with her.
(10/19/03)

Rebecca