Looking for Books to Love My Ukrainian Neighbors

 

Ukraine. Russia. Invasion. The news of the last couple of days has sent me first to books to understand and then help my students understand what is going on in the world.

I believe fervently in the power of books. Non-fiction, yes—to help us grasp history, facts, events, connections, influences. Also fiction—to help us grasp the humanity of the people experiencing the history, share their experience vicariously, so that we can love our global neighbors as ourselves, as fellow image bearers of God, as Jesus does. (See this recent blog post about what my students learned from reading When My Name Was Keoko, set in Korea during the Japanese occupation.)

My first thought was to put up a poster of the books students can read—as I’ve done for Afghanistan and other countries throughout this school year. I scanned my mental bookshelf—Tolstoy, Dostoevsky for Russia. Definitely out of my 4th through 7th graders’ range. Voices from Chernobyl and The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich—fascinating parts of my Nobel Prize for Literature project, but one book left behind in my last high school world lit classroom and the other on my Kindle, and both equally out of reach of my middle graders. Possibly Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse, The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig. Ukraine? Nothing.

Since my classroom is in Japan, my books skew heavily to Asia. My own knowledge, too. Time to learn. I did a search of books about Russia and Ukraine. 

Best find: An interview from this week with Serhii Plokhy, the professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, on “The Best Books on Ukraine and Russia.” The interview itself is fascinating, and the booklist, I later discovered, is largely repeated all over the internet. Plokhy recommends starting with #2, so I think I’ll follow his advice. Then, given my predilections as an English teacher, I’ll follow up with #5, the novel. (I so highly respect a history professor who recommends a novel!)

1. Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War by Paul D’Anieri
2. Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know by Serhy Yekelchyk
3. Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History by Yuri Kostenko
4. Ukraine in Histories and Stories: Essays by Ukrainian Intellectuals
5. The Orphanage: A Novel by Serhiy Zhadan

USA Today ("Want to Understand What Led to Russia Invading Ukraine? Read These 8 Books") recommended Plokhy himself and his first choice, adding a couple more, including a National Book Award winner and a Pulitzer Prize winner: 

1. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen (2017) National Book Award
2. The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen (2012)
3. Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick (1994) Pulitzer Prize
4. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy (2015)
5. Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War by Paul D’Anieri (2019)
6. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder (2018)
7. In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine by Tim Judah (2016)
8. On Our Way Home from the Revolution: Reflections on Ukraine by Sonya Bilocerkowycz (2019)

The Times of India repeated1-5 from Plokhy's list above and added the following:

• Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
• Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (atrocities in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus 1930-45)
• Through Times of Trouble: Conflict in Southeastern Ukraine Explained from Within by Anna Matveeva and Michael O. Slobodchikoff

I tried a search for YA and middle grades books. Beyond what I’d already listed, there were lists, but nothing that was (1) detailed enough to give me good direction or (2) if detailed, specifically focused on my age level. So that will take some more research. Here are a couple of places I’ll start:

• Russia in YA and Middle Grades Historical Fiction (Goodreads) 
• Books Set in Eastern Europe and Russia (The Book Girls’ Guide) 

What books are you reading yourself and what books are you putting in the hands of young readers to help us all understand how to love, pray for, and act on behalf of our global neighbors in crisis right now in Ukraine?