Anika Kehl: Stories as the marker of one’s identity in Janice Kulyk Keefer’s ‘The Green Library’ [PDF]

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Didactics for the subject English – Literature, Works, grade: 1, 3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar: Identities in Ukrainian-Canadian Literature, language: English, abstract: In Janice Kulyk Keefer’s The Green Library, it is Eva Chown, a forty-three year old middle class woman living in Canada, who tries to find her Ukrainian identity within herself through stories. She has to go back to the stories of her ancestors and to a history of a country she barely knows in order to find out what ‘being half Ukrainian’ means to her and her son, Ben. On her way back ”[…] into a world of stories […]” (Keefer, 1998, 17) she listens to many of them told by strangers, reads history books, and also “makes up” her own stories of what might have happened. In whichever form the stories appear, they change her life and mark her identity. But it is not only Eva whose identity is so often influenced by stories. The Green Library presents many characters who define themselves through stories in one way or another.
This paper will argue that stories are the marker of one’s identity, that they can even help construct it. These stories can be based upon personal experiences or historical events. They can be true for everybody or they can only be true for the person telling them. As Dan P. Mc Adams, Ruthleen Josselson, and Amia Lieblich put it in their book Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative “We are all storytellers, and we are the stories we tell.” (3) Furthermore our “[…] identities are the stories we live by.” (Mc Adams, Josselson, Lieblich 4)
In the beginning of the paper the concepts of story, history, and identity, which are relevant for the theses, are briefly defined. It will be analysed which impact stories can have on the life of a person and various examples from the Green Library will be discussed. Since ‘Eva’ is the protagonist of the novel the paper will very often be concentrated on her experiences but will also include other character’s stories. After that it will be analysed how identities can be constructed through stories with the example of Oksanna Moroz. In the end there will be a description of the value of history in the book and the differences and similarities between story and history will be deconstructed primarily regarding the aspect of truth. In conclusion the concept of a bloodline as one major marker of identity will be discussed.