Przetrząsanie rodzinnej historii. Tożsamość narracyjna w Domu z witrażem Żanny Słoniowskiej i Dzieciach Kazimierza Michała Garapicha
Sifting Through Family History. Narrative Identity in Dom z witrażem [A House with Stained Glass] by Żanna Słoniowska and Dzieci Kazimierza [The Children of Kazimierz] by Michał Garapich

Summary/Abstract: The last decade has fostered reflection on Polish-Ukrainian relations in literature. Among the numerous literary texts addressing this topic, the author of this article selects two works for analysis by writers who debuted after 2014 and who represent Polish-Ukrainian families: Dom z witrażem (A House with Stained Glass, 2015) by Żanna Słoniowska and Dzieci Kazimierza (The Children of Kazimierz, 2019) by Michał P. Garapich. Słoniowska’s family saga, depicting four generations of women living in a Lviv tenement house with a deteriorating stained glass window symbolising the protagonists’ convoluted lives, is compared with Garapich’s memoir-like narrative, situated on the border between artistic prose and scientific discourse, which recounts the search for the descendants of numerous illegitimate children of the author’s great-grandfather's on a family estate in Podolia. This comparison provides an opportunity to reflect on Polish-Ukrainian relations from various angles and perspectives. The unifying concept for the issues analysed and the research perspectives referenced is narrative identity. The article demonstrates that the first-person narration in both texts not only offers an original approach to and problematization of pivotal moments in Polish-Ukrainian history, but also uncovers an unofficial genealogy of families from the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands. This further helps to explore the authors’ own “hybrid” identities, shaped between traditions and languages.

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