Stubborn Life - by Franceska Michalska (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A memoir of the
Russian occupation of Ukraine in the 1930s and the mass deportation of Poles
from the region.

"Not an easy read, but an important one." -Historical Novel Society

The end of the 1920s, the author's first memory: a knock on the door and the arrest of her uncle, guilty of "anti-Soviet activities." He is to be executed. Born in 1923, a dozen or so kilometers from the pre-war Polish-Soviet border, Franceska Michalska is a citizen of occupied Ukraine. Her family, finding a nest of eggs to eat, miraculously survive the great famine of 1931-32 before falling victim to growing Stalinist terror and the mass deportation of Poles from the region to Kazakhstan. All the while, Franceska dreams of studying medicine. 8,000 km and infinite difficulties later, she enters Poland and becomes a doctor, finally obtaining the Polish nationality she never had. Writing in a heartfelt yet matter-of-fact style, Michalska brilliantly evokes daily life under Russian occupation. Now more than ever, this memoir reads like a warning against history repeating, while at the same time offering a testament to human strength and to hope.

Review Quotes

Praise for Stubborn Life
"Not an easy read, but an important one." -Historical Novel Society

"In her earliest memories of life in 1930 on the Soviet side
of the border between Ukraine and Poland, author Michalska recalls activists
coming to her family's small village and plundering property (...). In her
memoir, Michalska shows readers the desperation of residents during the great
famine when 3 million died and survivors were often too weak to bury the dead
or gather willow leaves to pound into bran for flatbread. Stubborn Life
follows Michalska after she and her family are exiled to Kazakhstan. The book pulls no punches. It does not use emotion but
direct, unadorned prose to convey the few instances, as Michalska acknowledges,
when fate took "her under its wing in a hostile, cruel world" and enabled her
to return to her homeland. It sidelines feelings of hope, instead elevating a
fierce, unrelenting determination." --Historical
Novel Society

"Rarely do people write about such great tragedies as calmly as Michalska does--without complaint, without blame. The dispassionate style of the narrative strengthens the impact of the description. This is a story about the will to survive, and about the joy that comes from that survival. Awe-inspiring--I read this incredible recollection in one breath." --Granice

"A sober hymn to tenacity and courage. This determined woman tells her story in a neutral tone, without pathos, without bitterness, without incriminating or nationalist reproaches. Despite everything, solidarity, dedication, and kindness persist." --Les Notes

"What a story! Stubborn Life is both a glimpse into all the complexities and cruelties of the Soviet twentieth century, and a sober and powerful account of a life marked as much by the determination to move forward as by 'the memory of all those (...) who stayed there forever.'" --Passage àagrave; l'Est

About the Author

FRANCESKA MICHALSKA was born in 1923 in Kamieniec Podolski, Ukraine. Miraculously, she survived the great famine of the era, and in 1936, when she was twelve, her family, along with thousands of Poles from pre-partition Poland, were exiled to Kazakhstan. During WWII she was sent to one of the Red Army field hospitals before being transferred to work in an orphanage. In 1941, she began medical studies in Almaty. Inching further and further west to other medical universities, first in Kharkiv, then in Chernivtsi, she finally found herself in Poland. In 1949 she graduated from medicine at the University of Wroclaw. Until her death in 2016 Michalska remained a well-known pediatrician and was visited by patients from all over the country. On April 10, 2017, she became the patron of the Care and Treatment Institute for Children and Youth in Baciki Środa. Stubborn Life was a finalist for the COGITO Literary Award 2008, and has been published in Polish and French.

SEAN GASPER BYE's translations of Polish literature have been awarded the EBRD Literature Prize and the Asymptote Close Approximations Prize. He has been a Translator-in-Residence at Princeton University, a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, and Literature and Humanities Curator at the Polish Cultural Institute New York. He lives in Philadelphia and currently serves as the Interim Executive Director at the American Literary Translators Association.