A novel about Ukrainian immigrants in 1940s Manitoba. At its center is a conflict between the young who are keen to adopt the customs of the new country and the old generation trying to preserve tradition.
This book presents a comprehensive overview of global courtship and marriage customs, from ancient history to contemporary society, demonstrating the vast differences as well as the similarities across all of human culture. This second edition of Marriage Customs of the World examines historical context, social significance, and current trends and controversies of matrimony in the Western world as well as other cultures. Apart from detailing the ceremonies from specific countries, the book identifies specific elements of the wedding event and discusses them in a comparative manner, showcasing the similarities across cultures. The new content in this work includes additional information on courtship and how future spouses are found in other cultures; marriage in art, cinema, theater, and poetry; wedding bands; forced marriages and shotgun weddings; New Year's weddings; legislation regarding marriage; and engagement practices. Entries carried over from the first edition have been revised and updated as well. With its broad scope and consideration of contemporary issues alongside historical information, this work will be ideal for high school and undergraduate students; scholars of anthropology, social studies, and history; and general readers.
When the wind brings her a babushka just like the one Baba use to wear, Natalia discovers the Christmas traditions of her Ukrainian heritage--the greatest of which is the love of family.
A quixotic figure, Vasile Avramenko (1895-1981) used folk culture and modern media in a life-long crusade to promote Ukraine’s struggle for independence to North American audiences. From his base in New York City, he built a network of folk dance schools and produced musical spectacles to help Ukrainian immigrants sustain their identity. His feature-length Ukrainian language films made in the 1930s with Hollywood director Edgar G. Ulmer, the “king of ethnic and B movies,” were shown throughout North America. Orest T. Martynowych’s The Showman and the Ukrainian Cause is a fascinating portrait how culture can become a political tool in a diaspora community.
"Describes and analyzes the dynastic marriages of the descendants of Volodimer, the first ruler of Kyivan Rus', across medieval Europe from the tenth through the twelfth centuries and presents more than twenty-two genealogical charts with accompanying bibliographic information"--
With real-life stories, this collection “focuses on the role of music in the often-delicate negotiations surrounding weddings in immigrant communities” (Ellen Koskoff, author of A Feminist Ethnomusicology). Music in the American Diasporic Wedding explores the complex cultural adaptations, preservations, and fusions that occur in weddings between couples and families of diverse origins. Discussing weddings as a site of negotiations between generations, traditions, and religions, the essays gathered here argue that music is the mediating force between the young and the old, ritual and entertainment, and immigrant lore and assimilation. The contributors examine such colorful integrations as klezmer-tinged Mandarin tunes at a Jewish and Taiwanese American wedding, a wedding services industry in Chicago’s South Asian community featuring a diversity of wedding music options, and Puerto Rican cultural activists dancing down the aisles of New York’s St. Cecilia’s church to the thunder of drums and maracas and rapping their marriage vows. These essays show us what wedding music and performance tell us about complex multiethnic diasporic identities, and remind us that how we listen to and celebrate otherness defines who we are.
While Canada is home to one of the largest Ukrainian diasporas in the world, little is known about the life and culture of Ukrainians living in the country’s rural areas and their impact on Canadian traditions. Drawing on more than ten years of interviews and fieldwork, Ukrainian Ritual on the Prairies describes the culture of Ukrainian Canadians living in the prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Despite powerful pressure to assimilate, these Ukrainians have managed both to preserve their sense of themselves as Ukrainian and to develop a culture sensitive to the realities of prairie life, creating their own uniquely Ukrainian Canadian traditions. The Ukrainian church, an iconic though now rapidly disappearing feature of the prairie landscape, takes centre stage as an instrument for the retention of Ukrainian identity and the development of a new culture. Natalie Kononenko explores the cultural elements of Ukrainian Canadian ritual practice, with an emphasis on family traditions surrounding marriage, birth, death, and religious holidays. Ukrainian Ritual on the Prairies gives voice to a group of everyday people who are too often overlooked, highlighting their accomplishments and their contributions to Canadian life.