When the war in Ukraine erupted, Russian-Canadian author Marina Sonkina dropped everything and flew to the Russian-Ukrainian border. Having come to Canada as a refugee with two young sons, she knew she had to help. Today, we ask her about how (and why) her experiences at the border became her new book, Ukrainian Portraits: Diairies from the Border (Guernica Editions, September 2023).
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Ukranian Portraits: Diaries from the Border. Available for pre-order now.
Q: Your newest book documents your time at the Ukrainian/Russian border as a volunteer, helping women and children fleeing the war. Did you leave for the border knowing you'd write about it, or did this realization come during or after your experiences?
A: No, I absolutely did not know I was going to document my experience. As I said in the preface to my book, my desire to go to the border came out of a certain helplessness. I knew that Putin would inflict the most brutal devastation on Ukraine, and yet couldn't do anything about it. So I decided to do the little I could. Returning from the camp to a small hotel after ten-twelve hour shifts, I was emotionally shaken and exhausted by what I saw and heard. Often I couldn't fall asleep. I started writing down people's stories as a way of helping myself to cope but also to somehow honour the suffering of women and children I met. I also thought their voices should be heard. When I returned to Vancouver, I saw I had a little book.
Author Marina Sonkina.
More about the book:
At the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Canadian author Marina Sonkina flew to the Ukrainian-Polish border to be one of the first respondents at the border for Ukrainians fleeing the war. There, working with the JDC—Jewish Distribution Committee—she used her knowledge of Russian and some Ukrainian to try to help women and children in the transition camp. The suffering on a massive scale was beyond what she could possibly expect.
More about the author:
Marina Sonkina is a scholar, a former CBC producer, and the author of several collections of short stories, among them, Expulsion and Other Stories. Having come to Canada as a refugee with two young sons she did not hesitate to help Ukrainians fleeing the war. Her experience at the Ukrainian-Polish border is reflected in her latest collection, Ukrainian Portraits: Diaries from the Border.