Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2015 8 (7)

Authors

Blashkiv, Oksana

Contact information

Blashkiv, Oksana:Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities 2 Konarskiego Str., Siedlce 08-110, Poland; E-mail:

Keywords

academic novel (Professorroman); immigrant literature; university; university; the other

Abstract

Although Marina Lewycka’s novel „A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian” is traditionally mentioned in the context of immigrant literature, it might prove to be more interesting if viewed from the perspective of the academic novel. A satirical image of a desperate thirty-six years old Ukrainian woman Valentina ready to marry a widower in his eighties for the sake of naturalization in the UK often overshadows the image of the British university teacher and this man’s younger daughter Nadezhda, who goes through a tough process of identity (re-)construction while trying to protect her father from the second marriage. Being born, raised, and educated in the UK, being a UK citizen with an active social position, Nadezhda not only holds British values dear, perceives herself as British (in fact born into the family of Ukrainian immigrants), but also as a university professor passes them on to the following generations successfully until the actual “invasion” of the Other into her life takes place. The (re-)construction of Nadezhda-the-daughter identity together with the image of the Other is a tough process consciously monitored by a satirized Nadezhda- the-university-professor. The role of the university and education in general proves to be decisive in this process, uncovering the conflicting multiple identities

Pages

1511-1519

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/19695

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).