Since the 1930s, interest in “ethnic studies” and immigration history has been growing steadily, not only among scholars, but in the general population as well. Anyone interested in the study of immigration and ethnicity in North America will be glad to know that a new resource has become available. The newly released “Gathering a Heritage: Ukrainian, Slavonic, and Ethnic Canada and the USA,” is a collection of articles and essays written over the past three decades by Thomas M. Prymak, a research associate of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, in which he reflects on the evolution of ethnic studies in Canada and the United States.
The essays explore the history of Ukrainian and Slavonic immigration to North America, along with the literature through which these communities and their historians sought to recapture their past. Several of the essays in the book are appearing in print for the first time, including the fascinating story of French Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy’s connections with Ukrainian Canadians, both in Canada and in London. The previously published essays have all been revised and expanded for this publication.
Mr. Prymak has grouped the essays topically into three sections. The first, “Emigration Studies,” starts with the oldest emigration from eastern Europe to the Americas before 1914, the so-called pioneer era, and finishes with the interwar emigration from the Republic of Poland to Canada.
The second section, “History, Historians, and Others,” emphasizes the pre-1945 period, but deals also with the contributions of post-1945 immigrants. The general theme of this section is one of increasing professionalism, with a shift from the spread of literacy – as for example, in the various prosvita or “enlightenment” societies – to scholarship and higher forms of learning, in various post-1945 émigré academic institutions.
The third group of essays, “Library Studies and Reference Works,” continues some of the themes from the second section, putting some of the points from the earlier essays into a more general context.
The final section, “Concluding Thoughts,” consists of a single essay comparing the Ukrainian experience in Canada and the United States.
Although the essays are grouped topically and arranged chronologically, there is no particular reason why they have to be read that way. Mr. Prymak, in his introduction, encourages the reader to “choose what interests him most and read it first.”
“Gathering a Heritage” is available from amazon.com in paperback ($27) and Kindle ($26) formats, and at Barnes and Noble in paperback ($30) and Nook ($17) formats. Both of these retailers also carry a selection of Mr. Prymak’s other works, including “Mykola Kostomarov: A Biograpy” and “Mychailo Hrushevsky: The Politics of National Culture.”