My Dead Parents

January 8, 2018
In this ruminative memoir, Yurchyshyn examines her parents’ past and tries to understand how their once-passionate marriage unraveled. In 2010, when Yurchyshyn was 32, her mother died from heart failure and alcoholism, leaving behind an empty Boston home filled with relics from her marriage, among them pictures and souvenirs from travels abroad and letters from her husband. Yurchyshyn’s father died in a car accident in Ukraine in 1994, when he was already alienated from his daughter and wife. Yurchyshyn had assumed that their lives had always been fraught with tension—that her father had been abusive, violent, and distant; that her mother had been depressed and drunk. Her father’s love letters revealed another story, one that Yurchyshyn tells with honesty and great care: “When I found my parents’ letters, I had to surrender the people I’d constructed from my experiences, observations, and assumptions so I could meet them for the first time.” Yurchyshyn highlights her parents’ happy early marriage—its joys, their exotic travels through the Middle East and Asia. Through discussions with her mother’s friends, Yurchyshyn learns about how the death of her brother Yuri from pneumonia before she was born changed her parents, leaving her mother isolated in her grief. This is a fascinating and insightful memoir about how relationships evolve and change, even after death.

February 1, 2018
A Ukrainian-American writer's account of the heartbreaking details she learned about her parents and their relationship after the death of her widowed, alcoholic mother.When Yurchyshyn returned to Boston after her mother died, she found a once "enchanting" home in shambles. Even more disturbing was the discovery of letters her parents had exchanged with each other that revealed unexpected depths of passionate affection. The author remembered her father, George, as "emotionally distant and occasionally abusive" and her mother, Anita, as "resentful and selfish." Determined to understand parents she believed had never been in love, she began re-examining her life with them. Her Ukrainian-born father had been a bank executive and her colorfully bohemian mother, the international vice president of the Sierra Club. Both had been travelers who journeyed to cities all over the world. While her parents projected a glamorous image to others, Yurchyshyn saw a very different picture at home. George's meanness and unprovoked rages terrified her, and Anita "looked like she was performing joyfulness without actually feeling it." George eventually took a job in Ukraine, where he died in a car accident when the author was 16. Left alone in the United States, Anita began the slow, agonizing descent into the alcoholism that eventually contributed to her death years later. Seeking answers beyond the tantalizingly incomplete records her parents left behind, Yurchyshyn interviewed friends and family members. She learned of the difficult backgrounds George and Anita had both overcome and of the infant son they loved and lost before the author was born. Most devastating of all, Yurchyshyn came face to face with the truth behind her father's death: George, who had returned to Ukraine to help establish a venture capital company, had been murdered. Searching and intense, Yurchyshyn's book is not only a heartfelt examination of parent-child relationships; it is also an unsentimental interrogation of the complex nature of family love.A probing and candid memoir.

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February 15, 2018
When Yurchyshyn is 16, her father dies in a car accident. It comes as a relief, as life is easier without the anger of a father whose standards could never be met. Over the next 16 years, booze becomes Yurchyshyn's mother's only solace as she slowly drinks herself to death. Yurchyshyn always believed her parents' relationship was fraught, filled with anger and resentment, but after her mother dies, Yurchyshyn finds a stash of passionate love letters that lead her to search for her parents' real story. She talks to relatives, colleagues, and friends only to discover just how little she knew. This self-imposed distance, both physical and emotional, makes Yurchyshyn a difficult narrator at times; her indifference, especially after her father dies, seems cold and selfish. But this only makes it that much sweeter as she uncovers bombshell after bombshell and begins to understand her parents' actions in a new light. This candid and redemptive memoir shows the fallibility of family and how perception can change everything.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2018

Yurchyshyn's first book, a memoir of her relationship with her parents before and after their deaths, examines the idea that children can never fully understand the depth and dimension of their parents. With an emotionally abusive father who died when she was 16 and an alcoholic mother who drank herself to death by the time the author was 34, there wasn't much of a relationship to speak of when Yurchyshyn began cleaning out her deceased mother's house. What the author found was a treasure trove of letters that showed loving, vulnerable people who were vastly different than the dysfunctional parents she had known. She sets out to learn more about them and, perhaps, find a way to mourn them. In this beautifully written, poignant, honest, and unflinching work, the author takes readers with her on her journey through grief and discovery as she finds out--for good or ill--who her parents really were. VERDICT An inviting debut that is highly recommended to readers with an interest in memoir, narrative nonfiction, and family history.--Crystal Goldman, Univ. of California, San Diego Lib.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2017

Cleaning out the family home, Yurchyshyn found letters and artifacts that completely changed her perception of her chronically depressed mother and her seemingly cold father, who had died mysteriously in Ukraine. Theirs was in fact a loving, glamorous marriage ultimately destroyed by Soviet-era repression. Yurchyshyn's anonymous Tumblr blog inspired a BuzzFeed editor to requisition the big-hit essay on which this book is built.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.