Larissa Babij

American-born Larissa Babij is at home in Kyiv when Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Her grandparents left Ukraine amidst the violence of World War II, and nearly 80 years later, she is fleeing the advancing Russian army. A Kind of Refugee chronicles the first year of all-out war in Ukraine through vivid dispatches that Babij sent to readers abroad. In cities flooded with refugees and bustling with humanitarian aid efforts, or while supporting an innovative military unit making DIY drones, Babij examines Ukrainian cultures of cooperation. Reflecting on her American upbringing, she ponders the premium that Western societies—shaped by the traumatic history of WWII—place on security. Back in Kyiv, sirens, Russian missile strikes, and long periods of darkness organize her days. This moving account of taking responsibility for your home and your history concludes with several essays on theater published between 2015 and 2018. Written with a fierce love and admiration for Ukraine and its people, this book is a testament to the courage of ordinary people committed to freedom while defending their homeland.

Larissa Babij is a Ukrainian-American writer, translator, and dancer based in Kyiv, Ukraine, since 2005. She holds a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, USA, and an MA in Cultural Studies from the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” in Ukraine. She is also a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education. Her writing has appeared in The Evergreen Review, Arrowsmith Journal, The Odessa Review, Springerin, and other publications. She reports on living in Ukraine at war and participating in the country’s civic-military defense at a Kind of Refugee (see https://akindofrefugee2022.substack.com/).

"Good writing collapses space and time—-what's far grows near, turning »the other« into us. »When your conscience says ›Pay attention!‹ and you cannot look away, even though its scary, even though you are tired, even though you risk losing ... something inside you shifts,« writes Larissa Babij. Decades from now, when Russia's savage attack on Ukraine enters the catalogue of 21st century disasters, historians will turn to this chronicle by a courageous American woman of Ukrainian ancestry who chose to stay in Ukraine when others fled. By all accounts, the experience of war with all its urgencies, shocks, horror, and unexpected intimacies is incommunicable but 'A Kind of Refugee' comes close to achieving the impossible. Babij's vivid account of her days in Kyiv and traversing the war-ravaged country, together with a brief but illuminating return to the US, offers a paradigm and becomes an essential contribution to the growing body of what's known as 'the literature of witness.'"

—Askold Melnyczuk, author of The Man Who Would Not Bow