Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: My Dead Parents
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1978?
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2018048607
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2018048607
HEADING: Yurchyshyn, Anya
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035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca11291858
040 __ |a ICrlF |b eng |e rda |c ICrlF
100 1_ |a Yurchyshyn, Anya
370 __ |f Boston (Mass.) |f Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) |2 naf
372 __ |a Education |a Editing |a City planning |a Philosophy |2 lcsh
372 __ |a Autobiographies |2 lcgft
374 __ |a Authors |a Educators |a Editors |2 lcsh
375 __ |a Females |2 lcdgt
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Yurchyshyn, Anya. My dead parents, c2018: |b t.p. (Anya Yurchyshyn) jkt. (writing has appeared in Esquire, Granta, N+1, Noon, The Best Small Fictions 2015; MFA Columbia Univ.; grew up in Boston)
670 __ |a Amazon website, Apr. 10, 2018 |b (Anya Yurchyshyn; MFA fiction from Columbia and taught writing there as well)
670 __ |a Linkedin website, Apr. 20, 2018 |b (Anya Yurchyshyn; author at Crown; editor; content creator; Brooklyn, N.Y.; BA urban planning, education, philosophy New York Univ.)
PERSONAL
Born c. 1978.
EDUCATION:New York University, B.A.; Columbia University, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Content creator, editor, creative writing teacher, and author.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including NOON, Esquire, Guernica, Oprah Magazine, Mod Art, and N+1. Also contributor to Buzzfeed. Also contributor to Best Small Fictions of 2015.
SIDELIGHTS
Anya Yurchyshyn is most well known through her work as a writer. Prior to writing full-time, however, she attended Columbia University, where she earned her master’s degree. She then went on to lead her own classes there on the subject of writing. Her work has featured in anthologies, such as Best Small Fictions of 2015. She can also be found in such periodicals as NOON, Esquire, Guernica, and Oprah Magazine.
My Dead Parents: A Memoir focuses on its titular subject, the death of Yurchyshyn’s parents earlier in her life—as well as the aftermath. My Dead Parents begins after Yurchyshyn’s mother has passed away. Yurchyshyn, who grew up in Boston, makes the decision to travel back to the home she spent her childhood residing in, only to find a much different environment than she remembered experiencing. The home in and of itself is a mess, and Yurchyshyn finds evidence that the relationship between her parents was not at all what she thought it to be when she was younger. Neither of Yurchyshyn’s parents were ever particularly loving toward each other. Rather, her father and mother came off as clashing personalities, and seemed quite estranged. However, Yurchyshyn finds out that the true nature of their relationship was quite the opposite; they were deeply in love with one another, and expressed this through the existence of several letters, which Yurchyshyn locates within her childhood home. This discovery rocks her world and shakes up her view of her parents. This leads her to do a bit of reevaluation as far as her childhood and her point of view of her family life. Yurchyshyn initially remembered her parents as being far more troubled than the facade they presented to other people would indicate. Yurchyshyn seeks out the reality of her family’s history by speaking with those who knew her parents.
A Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked: “Yurchyshyn’s book is not only a heartfelt examination of parent-child relationships; it is also an unsentimental interrogation of the complex nature of family love.” They also called the book “[a] probing and candid memoir.” Booklist contributor Kathy Sexton commented: “This candid and redemptive memoir shows the fallibility of family and how perception can change everything.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer said: “This is a fascinating and insightful memoir about how relationships evolve and change, even after death.” On the bookstalkerblog website, Lolly K. Dandeneau wrote: “This is a deeply sad, moving memoir.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 15, 2018, Kathy Sexton, review of My Dead Parents: A Memoir, p. 17.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of My Dead Parents.
Publishers Weekly, January 8, 2018, review of My Dead Parents, p. 55.
ONLINE
bookstalkerblog, https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/ (January 11, 2018), Lolly K. Dandeneau, review of My Dead Parents.
I've written for Esquire, Oprah Magazine, N+1, Buzzfeed, Mod Art and Guernica, and I am a frequent contributor to NOON. My story from NOON 2014, “The Director,” was included in Best Small Fictions of 2015. My memoir, My Dead Parents, is forthcoming from Crown. I received my MFA in Fiction from Columbia and taught writing there as well.
Yurchyshyn, Anya: MY DEAD PARENTS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Yurchyshyn, Anya MY DEAD PARENTS Crown (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 3, 27 ISBN: 978-0-553-44704-0
A Ukrainian-American writer's account of the heartbreaking details she learned about her parents and their relationship after the death of her
widowed, alcoholic mother.
When Yurchyshyn returned to Boston after her mother died, she found a once "enchanting" home in shambles. Even more disturbing was the
discovery of letters her parents had exchanged with each other that revealed unexpected depths of passionate affection. The author remembered
her father, George, as "emotionally distant and occasionally abusive" and her mother, Anita, as "resentful and selfish." Determined to understand
parents she believed had never been in love, she began re-examining her life with them. Her Ukrainian-born father had been a bank executive and
her colorfully bohemian mother, the international vice president of the Sierra Club. Both had been travelers who journeyed to cities all over the
world. While her parents projected a glamorous image to others, Yurchyshyn saw a very different picture at home. George's meanness and
unprovoked rages terrified her, and Anita "looked like she was performing joyfulness without actually feeling it." George eventually took a job in
Ukraine, where he died in a car accident when the author was 16. Left alone in the United States, Anita began the slow, agonizing descent into the
alcoholism that eventually contributed to her death years later. Seeking answers beyond the tantalizingly incomplete records her parents left
behind, Yurchyshyn interviewed friends and family members. She learned of the difficult backgrounds George and Anita had both overcome and
of the infant son they loved and lost before the author was born. Most devastating of all, Yurchyshyn came face to face with the truth behind her
father's death: George, who had returned to Ukraine to help establish a venture capital company, had been murdered. Searching and intense,
Yurchyshyn's book is not only a heartfelt examination of parent-child relationships; it is also an unsentimental interrogation of the complex nature
of family love.
A probing and candid memoir.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Yurchyshyn, Anya: MY DEAD PARENTS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFil
My Dead Parents
Kathy Sexton
Booklist.
114.12 (Feb. 15, 2018): p17.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
My Dead Parents.
By Anya Yurchyshyn.
Mar. 2018. 336p. Crown, $27 (9780553447040). 920.
When Yurchyshyn is 16, her father dies in a car accident. It comes as a relief, as life is easier without the anger of a father whose standards could
never be met. Over the next 16 years, booze becomes Yurchyshyn's mother's only solace as she slowly drinks herself to death. Yurchyshyn always
believed her parents' relationship was fraught, filled with anger and resentment, but after her mother dies, Yurchyshyn finds a stash of passionate
love letters that lead her to search for her parents' real story. She talks to relatives, colleagues, and friends only to discover just how little she
knew. This self-imposed distance, both physical and emotional, makes Yurchyshyn a difficult narrator at times; her indifference, especially after
her father dies, seems cold and selfish. But this only makes it that much sweeter as she uncovers bombshell after bombshell and begins to
understand her parents' actions in a new light. This candid and redemptive memoir shows the fallibility of family and how perception can change
everything. --Kathy Sexton
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Sexton, Kathy. "My Dead Parents." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2018, p. 17. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531171500/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ac732a23. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A531171500
My Dead Parents
Publishers Weekly.
265.2 (Jan. 8, 2018): p55.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
My Dead Parents
Anya Yurchyshyn. Crown, $27, (336p) ISBN 9780-553-44704-0
In this ruminative memoir, Yurchyshyn examines her parents' past and tries to understand how their once-passionate marriage unraveled. In 2010,
when Yurchyshyn was 32, her mother died from heart failure and alcoholism, leaving behind an empty Boston home filled with relics from her
marriage, among them pictures and souvenirs from travels abroad and letters from her husband. Yurchyshyn's father died in a car accident in
Ukraine in 1994, when he was already alienated from his daughter and wife. Yurchyshyn had assumed that their lives had always been fraught
with tension--that her father had been abusive, violent, and distant; that her mother had been depressed and drunk. Her father's love letters
revealed another story, one that Yurchyshyn tells with honesty and great care: "When I found my parents' letters, I had to surrender the people I'd
constructed from my experiences, observations, and assumptions so I could meet them for the first time." Yurchyshyn highlights her parents'
happy early marriage--its joys, their exotic travels through the Middle East and Asia. Through discussions with her mother's friends, Yurchyshyn
learns about how the death of her brother Yuri from pneumonia before she was born changed her parents, leaving her mother isolated in her grief.
This is a fascinating and insightful memoir about how relationships evolve and change, even after death. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"My Dead Parents." Publishers Weekly, 8 Jan. 2018, p. 55. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A524503017/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ca6bb529. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A524503017
Ukraine sounded like a setting for a dark fairy tale that offered no magic or redemption, a place that had nothing to do with me.
It’s a strange sort of life for American born children with parents who come from other countries. The stories our parents share are nothing we can fully grasp, having never been at the mercy of losing our freedoms, yearning for a culture you had to leave behind, our only history in memories painted by our parents. It’s so much harder when you’ve never been taught your parent’s language, there are things that never translate (words, memories, nightmares). How are we to understand the spaces in the distance between us, the sorrows we can’t understand because said parent doesn’t have the words to express them, even if their English is flawless? Culture is a beautiful thing, but it can be limiting too. In part of the memoir, Anya mentions her cousins being more ‘Ukrainian’ than she and her sister were, having been exposed to the culture and taught the language. Her father compared them and felt she and her sister could never measure up, but how could she when he didn’t take the effort nor time to teach them. It’s funny how common that is, how often a parent can be proud of their heritage and yet give up teaching their American children about it, especially the language, then feeling slighted their offspring can’t say a word beyond hello and goodbye in their mother tongue, nor muster up the sufficient amount of pride and patriotism their parent feels.
We have a habit of dissecting behaviors based on our own experiences, never thinking how living in a country can mould you. Coldness can be a defense, mistrust and distance can be a byproduct of real events that took place when you had to fear your neighbors, even your own family turning you in for speaking against the regime. It means nothing to a child though, looking for love, acceptance, warmth. Anya has only her own experience to draw from, her own homeland, with needs any American child has that foreign parents resent or simply cannot comprehend. Their expectations are so much higher, understanding what obstacles they had to conquer to get where they are. Both are naturally gifted, highly intelligent, but it for Anya what is simple to her parents was a struggle for her. Anya’s parents were different people when they were alone together on their travels. As parents they were disappointed, short-tempered, demanding, drunk, distant, or outright absent. It was impossible to work up enthusiasm for his short visits, he was as much as a stranger. When her father was killed, she was numb because what did she really know about him? She could only recall being a disappointment to him. He was never really around, having lived overseas for his job, far more interested in his career. To Anya’s eyes there was a selfish cruelty there, how different her mother could have been had she had support, love instead of being a married woman living like a single mother. He got to use his education, give his dreams wings, experience all the exciting things the places he traveled and worked at had to offer while her once vibrant, gorgeous, intelligent mother was left behind to be the adult. It robbed she and her sister as much, leaving them with an unhappy mother that didn’t have the energy or wherewithal to nurture them. Her mother was consumed over his death, it had to have been murder! It was because of his work! Growing up, Anya’s mother drank herself into a stupor, she couldn’t be sure how much was delusional drunk ravings or truth. She falsely believed her parents were incapable of love, especially for each other.
It isn’t until she loses her mother that she uncovers the secret wounds both her mother and father carried, and finds herself traveling to Wales and the Ukraine, speaking to people who knew them to find out if there is truth to her father having been murdered. In the process, she discovers losses her mother suffered, that explains perfectly how she became unhinged. The heartbreak is in realizing she would have loved to know them, how much fun it would have been to be friends with her mother, to see the light in her father’s eyes when he was in his element, as strangers knew him. But it’s never to be. All she has is the remains of the past.
It’s a struggle, in loss people gasp when someone confesses that they didn’t feel the expected emotions to their parent’s passing. Maybe that’s because so many people have intimate relationships with their parents, or a gentler, safer upbringing. Others are left to struggle with conflicting emotions, particularly in abusive relationships. Taking care of a drunk parent is a form of abuse, distance is a form of abuse. Yet, through her search she knows there were reasons why her mother couldn’t keep things together, why her father chose to ‘run’ from her sorrow. There is still love but it’s a different sort. Anya, through excavating the ruins of her parent’s life and marriage, is able to forgive and maybe find some peace, solve some of the mystery of who they were as people. This is a deeply sad, moving memoir. Some answers still leave many questions. Was he murdered? Was his death just an unlucky accident? Some questions never have a solid answer, especially in countries where truth is a slippery beast.