Dokiya Humenna

If other nations had such a writer, they would have made her a national heroine: they would have written monographs, made films and TV shows, and awarded her state awards.

Mykola Mushynka, folklorist, art historian

Dokiya Humenna was a Ukrainian émigré writer whose literary heritage includes more than 30 volumes. Among them are several works about the Ukrainian diaspora.

Humenna was born on March 10 (23), 1904, in Zhashkiv, Cherkasy region. She graduated from the pedagogical school in Stavyshche and the Institute of People’s Education. While studying, she began writing, and at 20, she started publishing her works in magazines (in 1924, her first essay, “ U Stepu” /In the Field was published) and joined the Pluh (The Plough) Peasant Writers’ Union. By the early 1930s, some of Humenna’s essays, including “Strilka kolyvayetsya” (The Arrow is Oscillating, 1930), reports, short stories, and novels (“Kampanija”/Campaign, 1931), were published in prestigious publications.

However, for her truthful portrayal of the life of the Ukrainian village in the 1920s and 1930s, the writer was persecuted by censors and colleagues. After a several-year break, she got back to writing after participating in an archaeological expedition in 1937. That tour influenced her stories and essays “Romashky na Skhylakh” (Daisies on the Hills), “Z istorii syvoii davnyny” (From the History of Ancient Times) and “Taemnytsia cherepka” (The Mystery of the Crock). However, she was not able to rejoin the circle of writers approved by the party. Her story, “Virus” (1940), was heavily criticized.

During the Second World War, Dokiya Humenna was in exile, living in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Germany, and eventually settling in the United States. There, she finally felt free and was able to begin organizing her works, which were not (and could not be) published in her homeland under Soviet rule. In total, she wrote and published 20 books abroad at her own expense, including the collection of short stories “Kurkulska Viliya” (Salzburg, 1946), “Kreschatyi Yar” (1956), and “Vichni Vohni Alberty” (The Eternal Flames of Alberta, 1959), “Zolotyi Pluh” (The Golden Plough, 1969), and her most famous and voluminous work, the 4-volume epic “Dity Chumatskoho Shliakhu” (Children of the Milky Way, Munich-New York, 1948-1951) about the life and hardships of Ukrainians in the late nineteenth century ─ in the 1930s.

The main themes of her works, which also serve as a historical source, are:

• The destruction of the Ukrainian village in the 1920s and 1930s.
• The literary life of Ukraine in the 1920s and 1940s.
• Memories of the Ukrainian intelligentsia of that time.
• Ukrainian diaspora.

Dokiya Humenna was active in the Ukrainian community in the United States, participating in the founding of the “Slovo” Association of Ukrainian Writers in New York. She was ecstatic after Ukraine regained independence but could not visit her homeland. However, even during her lifetime, even during the Cold War, Dokiya Humenna’s words reached Ukraine: the Ukrainian service of the Voice of America broadcasted her works “Children of the Milky Way”, “The Eternal Flames of Alberta”, and others that told the story of the tragic and victorious fates of Ukrainian immigrants in the turbulent twentieth century.

Dokiya Humenna died on April 4, 1996, in New York City. She is buried at the Ukrainian Orthodox cemetery in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.