I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated by Luisa Muradyan

 

 

         In Luisa Muradyan’s second book, I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated, grief, hope, and the immigration experience collide against the backdrop of everyday life in America and daily news from the devastating war in Ukraine. In the acknowledgements, Muradyan gives a thank-you that truly encapsulates the collection’s entire ethos: “And a final thanks to my ancestors, who built the stage I am on.” I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated is a careful dissection of the familial linkages that connect the historical events that shape one’s own identity with current events that continue to reshape the ways one interacts with their neighbors, communities, and other family members.
         The collection opens with “Into Oblivion,” a poem that establishes the ancestral stage on which Muradyan’s poems rely. It is a smooth poem, blending environmental catastrophe with personal reflection and war imagery. A distinct, meaningful narrative centers the poem:

           At the market in Odesa
           my grandfather waits for me.
           It is my turn to haggle over
           the price of strawberries,
           once again I am too American
           for this moment, he wants me to
           do what I have been taught to do
           he wants me to survive.

Muradyan’s incorporation of ancestral figures like the grandfather reflects how deeply ingrained honoring one’s ancestors is in Ukrainian culture. The speaker’s assertation that the grandfather “wants” the speaker to do what they have been “taught to do” is a testimony, too, to the spirit of survival—formed from generations of historical struggle and oppression—inherent in Ukrainian and Jewish histories.
         The poem “At the Kansas Flint Hill Museum” addresses the emotional, socio-cultural, and even intellectual distance many Americans keep between themselves and global events. “Ukraine is back in the imaginations of my well-meaning / acquaintances who fold their faces into the shape of concern and / ask how my family is.” The verb phrase “is back” is simple, yet jarring, creating the sensation of reluctant return. The term “well-meaning” solidifies the implied distance and reluctance. The speaker places a type of emotional barrier between themself and the acquaintances. Again, the ancestors call to the speaker as the speaker professes to hearing “the field of wildflowers” and acknowledging “Somewhere my / grandmother sings.” Of course, while Ukraine is integral to the collection, one cannot read the book without noticing the emphasis placed on one of Ukraine’s most famous cities, Odesa. Muradyan is originally from Odesa, and during the current war in Ukraine, Odesa has endured significant attacks from Russian forces. Historically, the port city once boasted a large Jewish population and was, at one time, a major cultural center for Jewish culture.
         “Butterflies Remember a Mountain that No Longer Exists” testifies to the importance of places like Odesa to both Ukrainians and Jews. “My father tells me / that he will die before / he gets to see Odesa again,” the speaker laments. Helplessness develops as the speaker reflects that they “have nothing to offer” except for a memory of the father “too drunk / to walk but not too drunk to dance / down Derybasivska.” Derybasivska refers to a pedestrian walkway in Odesa that is named after Jose de Ribas, the builder of Odesa. The speaker’s inclusion of the street name shows that, when separated from the homeland, even the most common places—like a pedestrian walkway—carry emotional meaning and significance.
         The Jewish experience also centers Muradyan’s collection. Poems like “The Auschwitz Exhibit Asks me to Rate My Experience” is a powerful poem in which the speaker—again visited by their grandmother—experiences the sensation of intergenerational emotional inheritance. The poem’s brevity—16 carefully clipped lines— compounds the speaker’s connection to the historical events. Images of the grandmother center the poem: “My grandmother still won’t tell me / what she saw in that forest.” Thus, the poem—much like Ukrainian Jewish fictional works like Sasha Vasilyuk’s Your Presence is Mandatory—examines the intergenerational inheritance of silence and how many younger generations are left to their own investigatory instincts to uncover their family’s histories. The poem concludes with the speaker standing in front of “the portrait of a child” that is the same age as their son—a heart-wrenching, delicate image that serves as a reminder of the Holocaust’s extent as well as the depravity of the individuals and policies that allowed the events to unfold.
         Because of its ancestral reflection and immediate commentary on American society and what it means to be an immigrant, I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated is not only an important contribution to the American literary canon, but also to the ever-growing realm of Ukrainian diasporic literature focusing on generational trauma, immigration experience, and the current war in Ukraine.