One of the most notable shifts in Lithuanian diaspora research over the past decade has been the move from institutions and historical events toward individual experience, memory, and life narratives (oral history). This direction has gained particular momentum with the development of studies in transnationalism, life writing, cultural memory, and postmemory.
Laima Vincė is a well-known scholar and writer. The idea for her book Heritage, Connection, Writing: Conversations with North American Lithuanian Diaspora Writers first emerged as a postdoctoral project during her studies at Vytautas Magnus University. It is worth noting that her previous book, Vanished Lands: Memory and Postmemory in North American Lithuanian Diaspora Literature, published by Peter Lang International Publishers, focuses on themes of collective trauma and memory and is based on her doctoral dissertation. In that work, Vincė examines the expression of memory and postmemory in Lithuanian diaspora literature – specifically in the writings of authors of Lithuanian descent who write in English and whose work engages with Lithuania and its historical traumas. Vincė analyzes how the interconnections between Lithuanian and Jewish historical experiences are reflected in the literature and memoirs of different diaspora generations, with particular attention to Lithuania’s historical trauma.
Heritage, Connection, Writing: Conversations with North American Lithuanian Diaspora Writers is intended both for scholars and diaspora researchers as well as for a broader readership. The book invites readers to view heritage as a form of connection, creativity, and a possibility for a shared cultural future. Vincė’s book fits organically into the academic field of Lithuanian diaspora history while also offering a distinctive research model – instead of a traditional literary history or theoretical monograph, Vincė chooses the form of dialogue.
This book brings together the voices of twenty-seven North American writers of Lithuanian and Litvak descent. These are interviews with descendants of the first wave of emigration, children and grandchildren of wartime refugees (the postwar displaced persons [DP] generation), and American writers of Litvak heritage whose work engages with Lithuania. The book presents conversations alongside excerpts from literary works that reflect the experiences of people born outside Lithuania or those who left the country in childhood.
But these are not conventional interviews – they form a book of conversations (here it is important to distinguish between an interview and a conversation, a dialogue, in which the most important element is the act of talking itself). They form a kind of dialogue “between descendants and ancestors.” The work of North American authors of Lithuanian descent constitutes a highly significant part of Lithuanian literature, yet so far it hasn’t been fully researched. Writing in English, these authors engage in their own way of “writing the nation,” developing a dialogue between the historical traditions inherited from their parents and ancestors and the contemporary multicultural environment. Reflecting on this complex relationship is no simple task, yet Vincė consistently realizes her vision and conveys the central idea of her study.
The conversations are with writers from the North American Lithuanian diaspora living in such places as Alaska, California, Chicago, Colorado, Maine, New York, Scotland, and Vilnius. The book explores what it means to cultivate Lithuanian and Litvak heritage while living in North America and writing in English. Through conversations with twenty-seven authors and poets, the experiences of three generations and three waves of migration, cultural memory, and the search for diasporic identity come into view. In this way, dialogue becomes not merely illustrative material but both the object of study and a methodological principle. Vincė’s developed concept allows the volume to be read on several levels. On the one hand, it is a work of literary scholarship. On the other hand, it is a document of diaspora sociology, cultural anthropology, and autobiographical memory. Compared to Laima Vincė’s abovementioned monograph, this new book marks a conceptual shift, with its central focus on connection rather than trauma and postmemory.
Reading the conversations in the book, we begin to discern the underlying assumption that literary identity is revealed both in literary works themselves as well as in reflections on the creative process. In other words, an author’s self-understanding as expressed in conversation becomes no less important than the text they have written. This approach is closely aligned with contemporary life writing studies, in which autobiographical narrative is regarded as a form of cultural self-understanding rather than merely a biographical fact. In the introduction, Vincė emphasizes that life writing encompasses autobiography and diaries as well as poetry, the novel, interviews, and other modes of self-representation.
Vincė introduces key theoretical concepts, namely Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, her collaborative work with Nancy K. Miller, Rites of Return, the concept of collective trauma, and transnationalism: “Marianne Hirsch argues that in postmemory the memories of the trauma survivor supersede the narrative of the child’s life as they are growing up. She writes about how she could remember the streets that her parents used to escape the Nazis back in Romania, but she could not remember the details of her own childhood” (p. 533). However, the book is not burdened by theoretical discussions and instead gives priority to the interviewees’ voices. It can be argued that the author consciously relinquishes the researcher’s dominant voice and adopts a moderator’s position.
The book stands out for its structural logic. The conversations are divided into three sections according to migration history: descendants of the first migration waves, the postwar DP generation and their children, and authors of Litvak descent. This structure allows readers to see the cultural development of the diaspora as a whole rather than isolated lives. At the same time, it demonstrates that diasporic identity is not static. It is continually reconstructed by each generation. This editorial decision is also significant from a methodological perspective. Histories of Lithuanian diaspora literature have most often been organized chronologically or focused on textual analysis. Vincė chooses a third path: a sociocultural cross-section of generations. It makes it possible to observe how the relationship with Lithuania changes among authors born and working abroad. For descendants of the first migration wave, Lithuania is most often rediscovered through genealogy, heritage, and symbols. For the DP generation, Lithuania becomes the memory of a lost homeland. As for younger authors, it functions as part of a transnational identity in which a physical life between two countries has become the norm. Vincė develops this idea consistently in the foreword and introduction, emphasizing that, for many of the writers, journeys to Lithuania after the restoration of independence became a kind of “rite of return,” enabling them to rethink their relationship with family history, language, and culture. It is important to note that, in her conversations with the participants, Vincė does not seek to overshadow their interpretations. Instead, she deliberately refrains from claiming the “final word.”
The conversations address the history of different generations of the Lithuanian diaspora, their relationship with Lithuania, and their experiences of emigration and adaptation to a new cultural environment as well as political, historical, psychological, and moral issues. All of the interviewed authors raise important questions: what kind of identity emerges in the work of authors who do not write in Lithuanian? What image of the nation is formed by their texts? Scholars of diaspora literature and its sociological dimensions (Dalia Kuizinienė, Žydronė Kolevinskienė, Violeta Davoliūtė, and others) have emphasized that contemporary literature produced beyond Lithuania’s borders is gradually moving away from the long-dominant narrative of suffering and guilt, while at the same time retaining the central questions of national self-awareness: who am I, and who do I want to become? In texts written in English, the experiences of multiple cultures naturally merge. A writer who lives and creates outside the boundaries of their linguistic homeland allows into their work the voices, intonations, idioms, and translations of another culture, thereby enriching both language and culture while becoming more receptive to the Other. The texts collected in the book testify to the strong desire of contemporary individuals to preserve a connection to their roots in a globalized world, to understand their identity, and to continually turn back toward Lithuania – their own, their parents, or their ancestors’ homeland. All of the interviewed writers reflect on Lithuania in one way or another in their literary work. In this way, diaspora today is defined not through linguistic affiliation but through cultural connection. This represents an important paradigmatic shift, for Lithuanian identity is no longer understood here as a closed national category. Rather, it becomes a transnational cultural phenomenon in which genealogy, family history, cultural memory, language, creative work, and a voluntarily chosen relationship with Lithuania are all equally important. In these conversations, Lithuania appears as a space of imagination – at times, it is Grandmother’s stories, songs from childhood, family photographs, archives, or a first journey after 1990.
The first section of the book is devoted to the descendants of the first waves of emigration (economic emigrants called grynoriai1A term derived from the English word “greenhorn,” meaning a newcomer and DPs). The authors interviewed here generally no longer speak Lithuanian, yet they still consider themselves, in one way or another, connected to Lithuania. Cultural heritage, therefore, is not necessarily transmitted through language. It may be passed down through family stories, place names, surnames, religious customs, gastronomy, or even imagination. This idea is particularly important in contemporary diaspora studies. For a long time, Lithuanian émigré studies were dominated by a rather normative view, that proficiency in Lithuanian and participation in community life were the principal measures of Lithuanianness. Vincė’s interviewees significantly broaden this model. They demonstrate that a cultural connection can persist even when the language of a person’s parents or grandparents has already been lost.
The most striking example is Lidia Yuknavitch (b. 1963, USA; Vincė’s interview with her was published in Vilnius Review on November 16, 2023). In this book, the conversation with Yuknavitch can be read as a kind of manifesto of heritage as creative intuition. In her work, Lithuania appears not as a collection of historical facts but as a symbolic landscape in which beauty exists alongside historical violence. This dual perspective helps avoid a romanticized understanding of origins while preserving an emotional connection to the land of a person’s ancestors.
Jocelyn Bartkevičius’s (b. 1956, USA) narrative also plays a similar role. There, her grandmother’s garden becomes a miniature Lithuania in Connecticut. At first glance, such details may seem merely domestic, yet they perform an important role of cultural memory because they materialize heritage in everyday life:
My grandmother lived in a part of Lithuania where during World War I the Russians and the Prussians were fighting. She had to hide in the woods, and she told me stories about that. So, here I was, I’d get disoriented in the woods and lose my bearings, and I didn’t know what berries I could eat and meanwhile the irony was that my grandmother had survived in the forest. You could throw her anywhere, and she would know how to survive off the land. So, I wrote a piece called “Out of the Garden” because I had this sense that my grandmother had lived in this Eden, as horrifying and war-torn as it was. She lived in the natural world in a way that I couldn’t. That seemed tragic to me. I was two generations away from her, but I had lost that ability. (p. 25).
In this first section of the book, what might be called a “post-ethnic identity” emerges particularly clearly. The authors do not attempt to prove their Lithuanianness. Rather, they speak of it as one among many layers of their identity.
If the first section speaks about heritage without direct memory, the second part of the book presents narratives by writers whose lives are directly connected to the experiences of the Second World War and the Soviet occupation or to the transmission of those experiences to their children. It is here that Vincė’s ability to incorporate elements of her own individual biography becomes clear. Rasa Gustaitis, Birutė Putrius, Jonas Zdanys, Antanas Šileika, Irene Guilford, Daiva Markelis, Julija Šukys, Nida Dauknys, Audrė Budrys, Milda de Voe, Rimas Užgiris, Maria Williams, Gint Aras, Daiva Chesonis, and Svaja Vansauskas tell very different life stories, yet their words are united by one central question: what does it mean to inherit a history that you did not experience yourself?
In contemporary memory studies, the so-called “competitive victimhood” model, in which different historical traumas are set against one another, is being criticized more often. Vincė’s book of conversations offers a different path – a polyphonic form of memory. One of the book’s most intriguing themes is language. The authors repeatedly speak about translation, mediation, and storytelling for another audience. Even those who do not speak Lithuanian feel a responsibility to tell stories that might otherwise remain unheard. Language thus becomes a form of moral responsibility.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is that it does not attempt to construct a single, unified narrative of the Lithuanian diaspora. On the contrary, it consistently highlights diverse experiences, which at times even contradict one another. For this reason, the book can be read as a polyphonic narrative in which what matters is not a definitive answer to the question “What is the Lithuanian diaspora?” but rather the interaction of the different voices of writers who live and create within the diaspora. The authors speak not only about Lithuania. They speak about America, Canada, family history, language loss, journeys of their return, the Holocaust, the Soviet occupation, literature, ecology, childhood, and the creative process. As a result, Lithuania is not merely a geographical place here. Instead, it becomes a symbolic point around which very different identities are constructed.
In this respect, the book aligns closely with contemporary memory studies, which understand collective memory not as a unified narrative but as a continually evolving cultural space. Jan Assmann, Aleida Assmann, and Michael Rothberg have repeatedly emphasized that cultural memory exists only through dialogue among different experiences. Vincė’s book of conversations puts this principle into practice.
The conversations in this book reveal how North American poets and writers understand and live with a heritage that has become inseparable from their identity. For authors born in North America, their connection to Lithuania, though often symbolic, remains an important part of their values and sense of self in an increasingly fragmented world. It can be argued that these authors open Lithuania to the world and the world to Lithuania.
The third section examines Litvak emigration to the United States. It includes a conversation with the internationally renowned artist Samuel Bak as well as with the youngest participant in the volume, the poet and lecturer Malachi Black. This is one of the book’s most compelling sections, as it juxtaposes Lithuanian and Litvak experiences and narratives while raising the question of whether the Litvak relationship with Lithuania can be analyzed through the same categories that are applied to the Lithuanian diaspora.
Ellen Cassedy: I don’t see myself primarily as Litvak American or Jewish American. I went to talk by Samuel Bak and his first words were, “Ich bin Vilner,” which means, “I am from Vilna.” That’s just not true for me. This identity is one that I discovered. I am truly a representative of the third generation. I’m really pleased with the overlap in subject matter of myself and Lithuanian American writers who are exploring that period, but I don’t put myself into that category really. I don’t put myself in the category of Jewish American writer either. I’ve gone through life with the name Ellen Cassedy, an Irish name, which is from my father’s side of the family, and you know that’s a particular experience rather than my being half Jewish and out there for everyone to see. It is a different experience than if my name were Ellen Levine, my mother’s name. (p. 515)
Vincė allows the stories themselves to speak. The work of Samuel Bak, Ellen Cassedy, and Rita Gabis introduce a completely different perspective on the memory of Lithuania from that found among the authors of the DP generation. They serve as a reminder that the history of twentieth-century Lithuania cannot be understood solely through the narrative of the Soviet occupation.
Laima Vincė herself states that she initially planned to write about the most prominent writers of Lithuanian descent in Canada and the United States (Antanas Šileika, Irene Guilford, and others), but another idea emerged. Many of the authors she interviewed shared that, within their families, the Holocaust was discussed only in a low voice. Among their relatives, there had been both rescuers of Jews as well as individuals who had collaborated with the Nazis. For this reason, the book’s third section is especially important. The volume primarily reflects the voices of authors who have consciously chosen to maintain a cultural connection with Lithuania. As a result, a positive relationship with their heritage naturally predominates. It is perhaps only natural that critical voices are far less audible – voices of those who speak of complete assimilation, the rejection of Lithuanian identity, or a conflicted relationship with their family history.
The twenty-seven conversations form what might be called a literary and cultural archive of the twenty-first-century North American Lithuanian diaspora. The significance of this “archive” will only grow over time. Importantly, the book has been published in the prestigious Peter Lang series Exile Studies. This enables Lithuanian diaspora literature to enter into a broader context of European and North American scholarship on exile, migration, and cultural memory. The book demonstrates that the Lithuanian diaspora of the twenty-first century is shaped by several waves of migration, different languages, diverse historical experiences, and multifaceted relationships with Lithuania. It represents a significant attempt to redefine what it means to belong to Lithuania in the twenty-first century, even when one lives on another continent and writes in another language.
