Banned Books Month: Guest Post from Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch: Forbidden Histories
I looked down at the long meandering line-up of kids who were all waiting for an autograph. Clutched in their hands were love-worn copies of , MAKING BOMBS FOR HITLER, and UNDERGROUND SOLDIER – three of my most recent books.
Scholastic Canada February 2012/Scholastic Canada January 2014.
The venue? London, Ontario, Canada’s first-ever Forest of Reading event at the Western Fair Grounds. Nineteen hundred students had been bussed in from all over the city. In order for a student to attend, they had to have read at least five of the ten nominated books in one of the Forest of Reading award categories.
I was there because my book, ONE STEP AT A TIME had been shortlisted for the Silver Birch non-fiction award (I ended up winning). The previous year, I had won the Silver Birch Fiction award for my novel, MAKING BOMBS FOR HITLER.
From those book titles, you can probably guess that I write stories based on the real lives of kids who have suffered through war. I’ve been asked why I am passionate about writing about kids and war. The answer is simple: the only way to stop war and hate is to have a reader step into the shoes of someone who is experiencing it.
Fitzhenry & Whiteside, May 2006.
One girl approached me, her steps tentative and eyes cast down. “Are you the author who wrote ARAM’S CHOICE?” she asked.
“I am,” I said, expecting an excited grin.
ARAM’S CHOICE had been a Silver Birch Express nomination a few years ago and it was one of my personal favourites: Based on the true account of a 12 year old orphaned Armenian boy from Turkey who had been exiled in Greece in 1923 with thousands of other Armenian children whose families had been killed in the Genocide. Canada sponsored 109 boys to come to Canada and my book was about one boy’s transition from a starving street urchin to a young Canadian farmer and student. Some of his experiences were funny, some were sad, but what they all had in common was fact. I had done exhaustive research, including listening to archival interviews of those 50 boys once they’d been in Canada for a number of years.
Marsha at the Western Fair Grounds on the day that hate literature was handed to her. The kids in the photo are her sign bearer and speech giver
The child who stood before me did not grin. Instead, she slapped a thick stack of glossy papers onto my signing table. “You should read these,” she said, then turned and walked away.
From her tone, I knew what those papers were. I didn’t want to be seen with them. I stuck them under my chair, pasted on a smile and kept on signing.
When I had a chance to look at the papers, they were just as I expected: Material that demonized Armenians and claimed that there was no such thing as the Armenian Genocide. When ARAM’S CHOICE had been a Silver Birch nominee, there had been a campaign to get it removed from the shortlist. That campaign failed.
Pajama Press, August 2014.
My heart went out for that young girl. She was obviously smart and an avid reader, but had she ever read ARAM’S CHOICE?
Aram was about her age and quite possibly from an area where she has relatives. Yet Aram’s story was not to be told because of his forbidden history. My heart aches for that girl and others who are being raised in an atmosphere of hate.
I have a new book out, this one for teens, and like ARAM’S CHOICE, DANCE OF THE BANISHED is about survivors of war. It explores a bit of history that few people know about – the internment of “enemy aliens” in Canada during World War I, but also what happened to the loved ones who didn’t immigrate but were plunged directly into war.
My own Ukrainian grandfather was interned as an enemy alien in Canada and to his dying day, he never forgot the shame of it. His sister and mother survived World War I, but both perished in World War II.
Scholastic Canada, October 2007.
Most of the people interned in Canada were Ukrainian and I’ve written two books on that subject (SILVER THREADS, PRISONERS IN THE PROMISED LAND), but there was also a mysterious group of men – not Ukrainian – from my own home town of Brantford Ontario who were rounded up in the middle of the night and jailed on the false charge of treason, then later sent to an internment camp in the wilds of northern Ontario. DANCE OF THE BANISHED was inspired by that incident.
DANCE OF THE BANISHED is a love story about Ali and Zeynep, set in Ottoman Turkey just at the time of the Armenian Genocide and World War I, but Ali and Zeynep are not Armenian and they are not Turkish. They’re Kurds who practice a very old religion known as Alevism. They pray by performing a ritual dance, known as the semah.
An archival photo of the men from Ottoman Turkey interned in Kapuskasing Ontario. Photo credit for that is: Courtesy Ron Morel Memorial Museum, Kapuskasing Ontario.
Ali comes to Canada first and saves his money to bring Zeynep, but when war breaks out, his hopes are dashed. He’s arrested as an enemy “Turk” and thrown into a Canadian internment camp. Zeynep is an eye-witness to the deportation of her Armenian neighbours. She cannot stand by and let this happen. With other Alevis, she rescues thousands, but dreams of a day when she and Ali can be reunited.
I consider myself a librarian-detective-writer and it took all of my sleuthing skills to untangle the real forbidden history that is the foundation of this love story. Will there be others in line-ups, poised to give me hate literature because I dared write this book? Perhaps. But I hope some will open the novel and read it, because the only way to stop the cycle of hate is to step into the shoes of someone who is experiencing it.
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch prides herself on being the only children’s author in Canada who is a dyslexic princess, and has received death threats and hate mail (she also sold grinding wheels for four years, but that’s a different story). She’s won oodles of awards and has written nineteen books. Her most recent book is DANCE OF THE BANISHED, a young adult novel published by Pajama Press, in fall 2014. Her website is www.calla.com
