Langford novelist explores B.C.’s Doukhobor culture
Replies: 5
Doukhobor Novel Does More Than Tell a Good Story - Vancouver Sun Article
| Jon_Kalmakoff (View posts) | Posted: 6 Jan 2008 3:16AM GMT |
Classification: Query
Article taken from the Vancouver Sun, Saturday, January 5, 2008:
Doukhobor novel does more than tell a good story
Robert J. Wiersema, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, January 05, 2008
SVOBODA
By Bill Stenson
Thistledown Press, 292 pages ($18.95)
When someone mentions the Doukhobors, many British Columbians think first of nude protests and the grisly results of low-tech but effective fire-bombings by the Sons of Freedom. That's an unfair stereotype of the devout Russian immigrants who came to Canada in the early years of the 20th century with the financial support of Leo Tolstoy. As Bill Stenson writes in Svoboda, his impressive debut novel, "A Doukhobor was a Doukhobor was a Doukhobor."
Svoboda is both an examination of Canadian Doukhobors in the waning days of their conflict with the federal government in the 1950s and an account of the effect that cultural shift had on three generations of a Doukhobor family: There's Vasili Saprikin, a a boy who comes of age in that tumultuous time; his mother, Anuta, and his deda (grandfather) Alexay, who emigrated to Canada.
Stenson (a writing teacher who lives in Victoria and is not a Doukhobor) has done a significant amount of research, and it shows on the page. Svoboda vividly depicts Doukhobor culture -- its religious beliefs, rituals, lifestyle and history.
Occasionally, the rendering of that history is somewhat heavy-handed, with lengthy speeches detailing the movement of the Doukhobors, the nature of their leadership and the roots of their conflict with the Canadian government over taxation, education and military service. Normally, such info-dumps would be problematic, but here they are necessary to build the social backdrop against which the events of the novel play out.
These details are illuminated in the narrative by the human toll they take. Svoboda is a Russian word for freedom or liberty, and all three focal characters deal with freedom, its promises and its costs.
From Vasili, who spends much of his childhood in a residential school, being forced to learn English before being released into a world fundamentally changed; to Anuta, the single mother forced to turn away from her culture to provide a better life for her family; to Alexay, whose dreams of freedom are bound to his Doukhobor roots, liberty takes different forms and brings with it different issues.
It is testimony to the strength of Stenson's writing that the reader only becomes aware in retrospect that the story of the gradual assimilation of Doukhobor culture into Canadian culture isn't restricted to that group; it's the story of every immigrant culture struggling to keep a sense of itself while functioning within a dominant alien culture. The prejudices faced by the Doukhobors -- prejudices which Svoboda rightly depicts as feeble and small-minded -- have not disappeared. They have merely shifted to the new immigrants who are trying to find a place in the Canadian cultural mosaic.
Stenson's novel is an important work, a moving piece of fiction that not only casts light on a largely forgotten aspect of our history but also brings into focus our actions and attitudes today.
Robert J. Wiersema is a Victoria bookseller and the author of the novel Before I Wake.
Link to original article: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=8c024d...
Doukhobor novel does more than tell a good story
Robert J. Wiersema, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, January 05, 2008
SVOBODA
By Bill Stenson
Thistledown Press, 292 pages ($18.95)
When someone mentions the Doukhobors, many British Columbians think first of nude protests and the grisly results of low-tech but effective fire-bombings by the Sons of Freedom. That's an unfair stereotype of the devout Russian immigrants who came to Canada in the early years of the 20th century with the financial support of Leo Tolstoy. As Bill Stenson writes in Svoboda, his impressive debut novel, "A Doukhobor was a Doukhobor was a Doukhobor."
Svoboda is both an examination of Canadian Doukhobors in the waning days of their conflict with the federal government in the 1950s and an account of the effect that cultural shift had on three generations of a Doukhobor family: There's Vasili Saprikin, a a boy who comes of age in that tumultuous time; his mother, Anuta, and his deda (grandfather) Alexay, who emigrated to Canada.
Stenson (a writing teacher who lives in Victoria and is not a Doukhobor) has done a significant amount of research, and it shows on the page. Svoboda vividly depicts Doukhobor culture -- its religious beliefs, rituals, lifestyle and history.
Occasionally, the rendering of that history is somewhat heavy-handed, with lengthy speeches detailing the movement of the Doukhobors, the nature of their leadership and the roots of their conflict with the Canadian government over taxation, education and military service. Normally, such info-dumps would be problematic, but here they are necessary to build the social backdrop against which the events of the novel play out.
These details are illuminated in the narrative by the human toll they take. Svoboda is a Russian word for freedom or liberty, and all three focal characters deal with freedom, its promises and its costs.
From Vasili, who spends much of his childhood in a residential school, being forced to learn English before being released into a world fundamentally changed; to Anuta, the single mother forced to turn away from her culture to provide a better life for her family; to Alexay, whose dreams of freedom are bound to his Doukhobor roots, liberty takes different forms and brings with it different issues.
It is testimony to the strength of Stenson's writing that the reader only becomes aware in retrospect that the story of the gradual assimilation of Doukhobor culture into Canadian culture isn't restricted to that group; it's the story of every immigrant culture struggling to keep a sense of itself while functioning within a dominant alien culture. The prejudices faced by the Doukhobors -- prejudices which Svoboda rightly depicts as feeble and small-minded -- have not disappeared. They have merely shifted to the new immigrants who are trying to find a place in the Canadian cultural mosaic.
Stenson's novel is an important work, a moving piece of fiction that not only casts light on a largely forgotten aspect of our history but also brings into focus our actions and attitudes today.
Robert J. Wiersema is a Victoria bookseller and the author of the novel Before I Wake.
Link to original article: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=8c024d...