Review by Lina Leparskienė
Dr Lina Leparskienė
Lietuvos nacionalinis kultūros centras – Lithuanian National Culture Centre
and Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas – Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute
English translation by Gintautas Kaminskas.
Read the original review in Lithuanian via „Būdas“
Excerpt
The book consists of nine chapters: ‘Prologue: A Pilgrim’s Journey’, ‘Motherland’, ‘Refuge Under a Southern Cross’, ‘Sweet Beginnings’, ‘Honouring the Goddesses’, ‘Triumphs and Tribulations’, ‘Absent Faces’, ‘From Captive Nation to Independence’, and ‘To Mother Earth and Morning Star’. The author’s text incorporates transcriptions of authentic commentaries by the book’s subjects, accompanied by pictures of them and old photographs from the people’s personal archives…. [The] Lithuanian artefacts they possessed – pictures, little sculptures, sashes, photos, etc. – were treated like holy relics in a church. At least this is the impression one gets from Eve Wicks’ poetic photographs of the subjects, their homes and their possessions. These are not like everyday photos: they have an aura of seriousness about them, and the colours are like from a dream…. Also included are some classic Lithuanian poems and fragments of poetry written by Australian Lithuanians. A constant motif throughout the book are woven linen patterns. These textiles can be seen as a metaphor: the story told by this book consists of various threads, that come together as in a weaving. The book is an aesthetic production, and its spacious layout invites the readers to take their time and read the book slowly and attentively. The texts about the experiences of Lithuanians slowly putting down roots in Australia and the author’s exploration of her own Lithuanian background are temperate and empathetic…. The book is carefully thought out. There is nothing unnecessary in it, and everything that it needs. it is like reading fine literature. In truth the book conveys insightful witness accounts and thoughtful descriptions, all depicting the reality of the subject’s lives; so the book is more than a documented history. As you go through this substantial book’s nine chapters, it’s like walking around a table, on which objects or photographs are displayed, each telling a new story from the lives of the émigré Lithuanians.
Full review
Somehow the 20th century won’t leave us in peace. It has dominated historical memory with our own and foreign experiences, which are constantly finding ways to speak to people’s hearts and minds. That era fails to slip away into the past due largely to the power of books. Things that have been spoken become things that are written, which creates the possibility of close, even if not face-to-face, contact with people from long ago and far away. The possibility of getting acquainted with Australian Lithuanians of the ‘displaced persons’ era has been made possible by Eve Puodžiūnaitė-Wicks, who was born in Australia in 1944. Her ‘memory heritage’ book called In Sunshine and Shadow: Reflections on Lithuanian Immigrant Life, which was published in Australia in 2018, has become accessible to readers in Lithuania via the Vilnius Book Fair.
The book consists of nine chapters: ‘Prologue: A Pilgrim’s Journey’, ‘Motherland’, ‘Refuge Under a Southern Cross’, ‘Sweet Beginnings’, ‘Honouring the Goddesses’, ‘Triumphs and Tribulations’, ‘Absent Faces’, ‘From Captive Nation to Independence’, and ‘To Mother Earth and Morning Star’. The author’s text incorporates transcriptions of authentic commentaries by the book’s subjects, accompanied by pictures of them and old photographs from the people’s personal archives. Also included are some classic Lithuanian poems and fragments of poetry written by Australian Lithuanians. A constant motif throughout the book are woven linen patterns. These textiles can be seen as a metaphor: the story told by this book consists of various threads, that come together as in a weaving. The book is an aesthetic production, and its spacious layout invites the readers to take their time and read the book slowly and attentively. The texts about the experiences of Lithuanians slowly putting down roots in Australia and the author’s exploration of her own Lithuanian background are temperate and empathetic. It is a bilingual work: Lithuanian text on the left (translated from English) and (original) English text on the right.
The author was born in Brisbane and no longer speaks the Lithuanian of her childhood. She began to feel a need to study her own background and to talk about it when as a careers and studies counsellor in a university, she began to encounter the difficulties and discrimination experienced by immigrants. She decided to write about these issues using oral histories from Lithuanian immigrants who started to arrive in Australia during the second world war (from 1940) and in the first few years after WWII, coming from refugee camps in Europe. Her raw material included informal chats and interviews, archival research, photographs of these people, their things, the interiors of their homes, old photographs, and new photos of the places mentioned. She used these in her Ph.D. dissertation and in photograph exhibitions, and this book. She interviewed a total of 41 subjects. Given that she dedicated a lot of time and attention to each subject, this was a truly large-scale undertaking.
The book is carefully thought out. There is nothing unnecessary in it, and everything that it needs. it is like reading fine literature. In truth the book conveys insightful witness accounts and thoughtful descriptions, all depicting the reality of the subject’s lives; so the book is more than a documented history. As you go through this substantial book’s nine chapters, it’s like walking around a table, on which objects or photographs are displayed, each telling a new story from the lives of this rather small group of émigré Lithuanians.
We found out more about the Lithuanian community in Australia last year, when visits were made by linguists and staff of the Lithuanian Central Archives; and Dr Gražina Pranauskas published a monograph in English called Lietuvybė down under: maintaining Lithuanian national and cultural identity in Australia“, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018).
I found Eve Wick’s book In Sunshine and Shadowinteresting as a narrative about the experiences of Lithuanians who had emigrated to Australia at different times. It’s a story of hope and dreams, experiences of intolerance, loss, homesickness and disorientation, as people tried to come to grips with the fact that this was now their homeland.
Immigrant life in Australia was accompanied by storms and shadows. A shadow was thrown by the fact of close relatives caught behind the Iron Curtain, concerns for the fate of their homeland, and the painful experience for immigrants in the intolerant British-origin Australian society of those days. There were basically no opportunities for developing one’s own cultural identity; and no one recognised qualifications or experience acquired overseas, it all had to been done from scratch. But there is light among the shadows: the interesting vegetation of Australia, the hard-earned occupational success, and, of course, the native Lithuanian culture. In this book it is somewhat sublimated, romanticised and mythologised. There is a reason for that. The subjects of the book talked a lot about their feelings for Lithuania; and the Lithuanian artefacts they possessed – pictures, little sculptures, sashes, photos, etc. – were treated like holy relics in a church. At least this is the impression one gets from Eve Wicks’ poetic photographs of the subjects, their homes and their possessions. These are not like everyday photos: they have an aura of seriousness about them, and the colours are like from a dream. In the Introduction the author writes about an inner wall of her house being lit by the dawn sun, illuminating the photos of ancestors she never met. The warm light of morning (or a dream) seems to pervade all of the author’s photographs in this book.
At first I was not very interested in the very pronounced emphasis on the longing for Lithuania. It seemed I had heard it so many times before, reminiscent of 20th century Lithuanians’ talk about the interwar Republic, the losses caused by Soviet occupation and the joy when independence was finally restored. But of course there could be no fabric of memory without these threads. A somewhat idealised image of Lithuania was important to Lithuanian immigrants in general, and to this author in particular, who searched for the roots of her identity and found them.
Eve’s conception of Lithuania was shaped by her parents. On the other hand, in one chapter she tells that she developed feelings for her parents’ homeland when she was living in Canada for a few years, because of the realisation that Lithuania is on roughly the same latitude and that similar trees must grow there, and the climate must be one with four distinct seasons. She describes how she saw the geographical contours of her unseen far-off homeland in a portrait of her mother as a young lady. That is the name of one chapter of the book: ‘My Mother’s Face’. In it she writes:
‘With my fingers I trace over the land. I feel Kaunas at the tip of her nose, where she went to high school, worked, studied law and enjoyed a cultured happy life with her sisters and friends. At the left corner of her mouth, where the curves of her soft lips touch, is Vilnius, the capital since the time of the great ruler Gediminas, and nearby, old beautiful Trakai. I hear the tapping of her pearly strong teeth: the knights and galloping horses, the old castles, fortresses and churches, symbols of a time when Lithuania was a power in medieval Europe. I imagine a wisp of hair falling by her right ear, the sand dunes and hushing pines of the Courland Spit, Neringa, and her favourite Palanga, where she loved summers and swimming in the Baltic Sea’.
In this case the romantic image of Lithuania coincides with the author’s personal myth about her own origin, so therefore it is authentic. In this book the author states that respect for one’s own culture and roots is important for the identity of any person, whatever nationality or social group he might belong to. The author emphasises more than once that the loss of cultural identity among Lithuanian immigrants is directly associated with lack of respect for it: the negative disposition of Australian politicians and society toward foreigners settling in their country.
Eve mentions that one of her interviewees always kept next to him in his workplace his house keys, his wedding ring and an English dictionary. Lithuanian and other immigrants experienced a lot of jibes because of their less than perfect knowledge of English, which was an obstacle to their professional career. Over time, many families began to speak only English at home, hoping that would make it easier for them to get on with the majority population. Some changed their Lithuanian names or even surnames, because they were difficult for Australians to pronounce:
At school the nuns couldn’t pronounce Bagdonavičius. Gaila’s second name was Judita. She was Judy Baggs, the nuns started to call it, so she became Judy Baggs. We became Bagdon when we were naturalised.
Lylė Bagdonavičienė-Bagdon
It has already been mentioned that this is a bilingual book. As I read the same text in both languages, I felt that I understood the content slightly differently in each. This is an interesting and subjective demonstration of how the language of a text may affect a reader’s reaction to the subject. In email correspondence the author explained to me that the texts are indeed both the same, but both different. She wrote the original text in English, because she is an English speaker, and the interviewees spoke English in the interviews. The English text is for Australians, including Australians of Lithuanian background who do not speak Lithuanian. The hope was that Australians reading the book would feel sympathy for their immigrant neighbours and be accepting of their characteristic ‘broken English’ elements.
Readers of the Lithuanian text also need to be frank and tolerant. The text was translated into Lithuanian by Gintautas Kaminskas, who was born into a family of post-WWII refugees and who grew up in English-speaking countries, including Australia from the age of 16. He knows the ins and outs of the type of language spoken by Australian Lithuanians. In his translation of the interviewees’ speech, their speech is rendered as it was heard, and it reflects the way post-WWII Lithuanian immigrants and their children spoke, having learnt Lithuanian in the diaspora. It is true that some of the words and sentences of the translation sound a little unaccustomed to our ears, and the influence of English can be felt.
I was most intrigued by the chapters that deal with the least-known facts: how Lithuanians managed to adapt to their new country. Let’s start from the beginning, with the highly unusual circumstances of the author’s parents’ forced emigration from Lithuania to Australia. “That took place in 1940, shortly after the start of the Second World War.” Her mother Klara, a Žemaitijan, married her father Pranas, a Lithuanian who had been born in Great Britain but later came to Lithuania, in Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Shortly after their wedding, 178 individuals, including 28 Lithuanians, were evacuated under the auspices of the British Government from the Baltic States to Australia. Klara and Pranas were on the list. They undertook a terrible 10,000-km train trip across Siberia (but fortunately not to Siberia) all the way to Vladivostok, where they commenced an arduous 6-week sea voyage to Australia, with a brief stop at Hong Kong. These immigrants were aboard the ship SSHaitan. They sailed across a world at war; and because of a typhoon and high waves, most of them suffered from sea sickness. Finally they arrived at Brisbane, where they began a new life in a foreign land that was not very hospitable to immigrants. In the author’s words, the Lithuanian passengers who disembarked from the Haitan in Australia began 23 dynasties.
After the end of World War Two, more refugees arrived in Australia from camps in Europe to fulfil work contracts. Local people were often suspicious of their language and habits. Although in their reminiscences the people in the book talk a lot about the cherishing of national symbols, organising Lithuanian events, and singing, it is also interesting to note the challenges they faced. At that time, as now, not everyone was happy with the arrival of the immigrants. The police kept an eye on the newly-arrived Lithuanians, and some investigations were even begun. Here is what one report by the Australian Intelligence Corpswrote:
Reliable informants state that they occasionally have noisy parties which last until the early hours. They speak and sing in a foreign language. Sometimes visitors are present at these parties.… These foreigners are blamed for local interference with radio reception, and are suspected in some quarters of operating a transmitter, but no evidence in substantiation was available.
In the chapter with the ambiguous title “Sweet Beginnings” is where most is written about the first years in Australia and the efforts made to get accustomed to the New World. This chapter tells of the men’s work on the sugar cane plantations. The refugees recruited by the Australian Government in European refugee camps in the late 1940s and early 1950s had to sign 2-year work contracts, and many of them were sent to work as cane cutters. This particularly applied to single males under 40. While fulfilling their work contracts, they generally had to live away from any relatives they might have in Australia. Married men had to work away alone, while their wives and children stayed in the immigrant hostels.
Eve relates the Lithuanians’ experiences thus:
‘It was as if a flurry of snowflakes from colder European climes swept out of the trains and settled around the far northern sugar towns, with others further south from Bundaberg to the Tweed region, and melted into the ground. The fair haired, fair skinned, blue-eyed men became blackened with the soot from the burnt cane, and browned by the sunshine, like the rich volcanic earth in which they toiled’.
This is what the Lithuanian men had to say about this period: the wheat fields of their youth were left far behind in the northern hemisphere, while here they were faced with cane fields higher than a man:
We were working in gangs of eight, seven cutting cane and one cooking. We had to clear the paddocks, cut the cane to the ground. We cut about 8 tons per acre. There were pebbles, we had to learn to use the knife, and many times would get a knife in the foot or shin. We weren’t making much money. The locals wouldn’t touch it, worked in gangs up to four, cutting new cane, yielding 12 to 14 tons per acre, making money. You should see the guys who came from the office. The pips were as sharp as razors. They had blisters, bleeding and infections. Farmers used to give them remedies. I felt sorry for those guys. They cut their feet through their boots.… We should have had gloves, but there weren’t any.… Our sweaty clothes from the hot sun on our back, the bees swarming seeking the molasses, the hot sticky sugar. It was very hot, humid, a jungle, tropical rainforest…. It was so hot, I don’t know how we survived. We drank gallons of water every day.
Benas Apanavičius-Aponas
Immediately we start a day after arriving. The farmers showed us how to do the job. The start was indescribable. No one can imagine. Most of our people had education, were office workers and in higher positions, and never had done physical work before. First week, when you're unprepared, the hands get so sore, you have to put them up so that blood would circulate easier. Blisters! It was very very tough. But eventually, I was only twenty-nine years, in my prime, so gradually get used to it. You started to learn how to do your work, and you make good money.
Viktoras Bagdonas
Apart from the hard work, the hot climate tired them. In addition, these newcomers encountered dangerous animals they had never seen before: snakes and crocodiles. On the other hand, even under such conditions their human needs remained the same: when you work, you work; and when you are relaxing, you sing and dance:
After you certainly want to enjoy yourself, and we all go to pub have a few beers. And every time when we walked to the pub which was about three kilometres walk, we used to sing, and all the farmers, along the way, they were very enjoying, they used to ask us, ‘sing us your songs’, and even in the pub ask us to sing.
Viktoras Bagdonas
Women’s experiences are described in the chapter, ‘Honouring the Goddesss’. Eve elevates the women, and admires their resilience. She even promotes them to supernatural level, saying that they were inspired by ‘the courage and honour of goddesses’, and that they were the ‘descendants of the spiritual ancestors’. These tropes make even clearer the contrast between the harsh reality of their lives and their efforts to acclimatise:
It was a strange country. I was frightened! Snakes come looking for water in the night. We had just came from Europe. Two weeks in Bonegilla and straight away Juozas had to go to North Queensland, to Ingham, to cut sugar cane. I was on my own with three small children … looking everywhere for Christmas tree. Just grass, barracks. Cut gum tree, brought home, made some funny decorations. So sad celebrating Christmas with gum tree, no husband, no telephone, only letter.
Filomena Luckus
The eucalyptus, a native Australian tree, is compared several times in the book with Lithuanian trees. It might look woeful as a substitute for a Christmas spruce; but later it is mentioned as a tree that helps immigrants put down roots in Australia and to regain their vitality. Wherever immigrants establish roots, they can feel a certain sanctity about the surrounding environment, so in more than one place in the book, the Australian flora emerges as a symbol of reconciliation with life:
I met an old Aboriginal in Goodna … his son was killed. He said, ‘Man, find a big wide gum tree and go and sit under it. You will feel peace – peace and quietness in your soul’. When Rimantas died I remembered what he said about gum trees. I felt an unexplainable feeling…. It's like Lithuania: all the beautiful green forests anywhere you look, and here it's bush … you go out in the bush, you feel at peace. Lithuanians like Aboriginals have got feeling through the land. Lithuanians say ‘this is my mother’. It’s land that’s your mother, like the heart of you. It's there, it's yours, and it's something very precious. You get that same feeling of spirituality when you're in the bush here that you had there, even though it's very different.
Anicetas Perminas
After working in the sugar cane plantations, the men started the second phase of their life in Australia. They had to get established in their new homeland. This is described in the chapter ‘Triumphs and Tribulations’:
‘Like a flock of tanned skylarks from home they migrated with their beautiful songs southwards, the majority to the cooler places in and around the larger cities, to the industrial, social, and political hub of the country, and to the larger Lithuanian cultural communities forming in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. A smaller number who enjoyed the warmth, but not the heat and humidity of the tropical north, came to rest in Queensland, drawn to the life in Brisbane and its surrounds. There, 1400 kilometres away, a smaller cultural community was gathering and singing, the men were completing labour contracts, finding work, making friendships, and meeting Lithuanian newcomers, including families assigned labour contracts in and around Brisbane’.
Since studies done and qualifications acquired in Lithuania were not recognised, people had to find new niches in life. Almost all had to start from scratch in unqualified jobs, although some managed to start a business. Despite that, thoughts about the homeland left behind were never far from an immigrant’s mind. It is not surprising that Australia’s Lithuanians were anxious to hear news of what was happening in their lost homeland – Russian-occupied Lithuania. The bitterness of loss is felt in the last chapter of the book, which describes how journeys to the much dreamt about homeland were undertaken after independence was restored. After decades of longing, a visit to the vastly changed post-Soviet homeland painted their idealised image of the homeland in more realistic colours and contrasts, even if still against a prominent background of nostalgic childhood images.
There were no farms, no villages. All the villages that I used to ride with a pushbike through, they had all been wiped out.… And all the rivers that used to be, they’re not there anymore. All the creeks that used to be running, they’re not there because they’re all straight, dug out.… They destroyed all the water mills. Every creek there was a flourmill or a sawmill. All that’s gone.
Vincas Kviklys
The river Nemunas was beautiful. Before we had sand, swimming, river very wide. When we coming it was small because they’re putting somewhere the water; and putting near Nemunas big factories, grey bricks. It looks horrible.
Filomena Luckienė
In my days, anywhere you go you can hear laughter, you can see smiles. This time no smiles, no music anywhere, or singing or dancing. It was like a one family in Onuškis.
Balys Malinauskas
Nonetheless, one senses the author’s attempts to depict a story of success. Hence one of the last stories in the book is that of Teresė, who feels safe and happy in Australia, but who brings back a handful of earth from the abandoned farm in Lithuania that was her childhood home, and sprinkles it in her garden:
When we bought our land I put it here, sprinkled it here, like ashes. When I am watering the garden in the morning, the sun comes there on the palm trees, I feel like I am in Lithuania again. I remember. I see my mother and father’s farm. Labas!
Teresė Stelmokienė
Yet again, I handle the book, which I have read several times. I take a good look at the photos. It appears that the clean houses with their tidily arranged personal effects, and the people who have led lives of dignity sitting quietly, are similar to the interwar-born generation of living in the towns of Lithuania, whom I meet and interview in my travels. Nevertheless, there is something about the colour schemes in the homes and a certain something captured in the posture and gaze of the heroes of the book, which tells us that the Lithuanians photographed by Eve are now Australians. They are separated from us not only by geographical distance, but also by different lived experiences. Identifying the differences is the author’s important achievement, while at the same time the book is put together in such a way that the people speaking to us from it are recognisable as our own.