Vilnius Interviews Part Two: Birutė Jonuškaitė

For the second installment of the Vilnius series, I spoke with Birutė Jonuškaitė, chairperson at the Lithuanian Writers’ Union. A writer and student during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Birutė was able to provide insight into the politics that have shaped Vilnius and Lithuanian literature. Though her English is much better than my Lithuanian, the interview was mediated by her daughter who helped translate. 

Birutė Jonuškaitė is a novelist, poet and journalist. She was born into a Lithuanian family in northeastern Poland. She later went on to study and graduate with a degree in journalism from Vilnius University. To date she has published five short story collections, seven novels, two books of essays, a book of poetry, and one novella for children. She has also translated a number of Polish authors such as Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, Jacek Dehnel, Bohdan Sławiński, Magdalena Tulli into Lithuanian. Since 2003 she has held the post of vice-president of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union.

How long have you been involved in the Writers’ Union and what you do here?

Every writer is connected to the Writers’ Union and wants to become a part of it. I have been a writer and a member since 1994 but I have a different relationship with it because for the last 15 years I have been working here as a vice-chairperson and at the moment I am temporarily serving as the chairperson.

What do you like to write?

I write short stories and novels, sometimes poetry but I only have written one book of poetry. I have also written children’s books and three books of essays.

It’s a theory, you know, that writers only write about themselves. I like to write about strong, independent women, who are not afraid to express themselves, who believe in equal rights. I think that many women today spend a lot of time talking about their unfair situations, and not enough time acting to gain the equality they are looking for. I am the first woman since 1922 to be the chairperson of the Writers’ Union. Unfortunately, literature is still a patriarchal institution so I write and I work to represent more strong women in writing.

I like to write about families and multiple generations; daughters, mothers, and grandmothers. I am very interested in human relationships and human behaviors especially in extreme situations when one has to make crucial decisions. I like to analyze how human relationships change with the world surrounding us and see the change in the last century. I ask if the 10 Commandments of God still have an important role in contemporary man’s day to day life.

In my short stories I also like to write about the time when I was a student. My situation back then was different. I am Lithuanian but I was raised in Poland so I am not a ‘product’ of the Soviet era and my thinking has not been affected by their ideology. I was raised freer and I was not afraid of Russian suppression because Poland was not occupied by the Soviets. In my family, we could speak about anything, read Western literature that has been banned by the Soviets and most importantly, we were not afraid of being deported to Siberia.

When I came to Vilnius to study when I was 19 years old, everything was so different, like a different world to me. During the five years I spent at university I felt like I was in a prison. I lot of people were trying to avoid me because I was from “abroad.” In a way I was considered an enemy, even though I was also Lithuanian. Some of my colleagues at university were spying on me because I was a foreigner, from an enemy country. They made reports of my life, where I was going, what time I came home, what literature I brought from Poland. I couldn’t leave Vilnius and I could only go home for the winter and summer holidays. I couldn’t celebrate Easter or Christmas because there was no religion here. All the believers (and there were a few among the students too) were hiding the fact that they were religious as at the time everyone was a member of Communist Youth League where the members were banned from believing in God.

I would spend the holidays alone in my dorm, and my friends would go home and maybe celebrate in a secret.

Why did you come to Vilnius for school?

I went to a Lithuanian-Polish school in Poland but it was very small as Lithuanians were a minority. All of our books were in Polish so we would work in Polish but translate it to Lithuanian when we were in class. The material was Polish but we were still speaking in Lithuanian because it was our language, our culture. That’s how I became a Polish translator.

So, there was an exchange program between Poland and the Soviet Union that allowed one student to study in Vilnius. That year, there was a journalism program at Vilnius University. I had been writing stories and diaries since I was a very small child and my teachers knew this so they suggested that I do the program. I got accepted, and it was a big challenge for me, because actually I had no idea what kind of life was waiting for me there.

The program was crazy. We had to learn so much communist history, and it was all nonsense. We had some classes like foreign literature, Lithuanian literature, but the professors were not allowed to tell us everything, the censorship was everywhere. For example, there was a polish poet born in Lithuania, Czeslaw Milosz, who for many years lived in California as an emigrant and taught at Berkeley University. I was a student when he won the Nobel Prize so I became interested in him because he was the first person from Lithuania to win this prize. I began to read his work and wanted to give a presentation on him for a class assignment. My teacher told me I had to censor what I wrote about him. I could tell about his biography, but nothing about his writing, as he was criticizing the communist regime. I was afraid because they could throw me out of the university and it would be on my record that I was speaking against the government. Everything that I actually wanted to write about had to wait till I was out of school. All the truth I wrote in my diaries and I am lucky nobody ever found or read them as there was a lot of material that could have caused me a lot of trouble.

How did you get involved working for the Writers’ Union?

For a long time I have worked as a journalist, and as a writer at the same time. I was the Editor-in-Chief of a magazine called ‘Family’ in Lithuania. It became very difficult to split my time between being a journalist during the day and a writer at home in the evenings. Sometimes it helped to be both. I have always liked to have conversations with people, to collect data, research, but it all takes a long time and I also had two small daughters to look after. I decided to focus on my family and the writing that I loved. It was a total coincidence that the Writers’ Union was looking for a vice chairperson at the same time when I was looking for new career opportunities. In the Writers’ Union I am offered a lot more freedom and a lot more creative work. I’m surrounded by people from my world.

What are your responsibilities as the chairperson?

As a representative of the Writers Union, I have to take part in literary events, congratulate writers on their jubilees, and celebrate publications of their new books. The Writers’ Union is a non-governmental institution so we also have to seek for government sponsorship by applying for various grants and other support schemes. We carry out various projects and a lot of them involve work with pupils. Writers go to schools and give literature lessons. Special attention is given to Lithuania’s region which is mainly populated by Polish people. We try to integrate them through various projects. We also go to Jewish, Russian, Belarusian schools and talk to pupils about our work, about literature and culture in general.

Since the 2004 we have been organizing Summer Academy for the most creative 9-12th grade pupils from all over Lithuania. Pupils are invited to our hospitality residence in Nida where for the whole week they are then working with not only writers, but also actors, musicians, sound specialist, cinema critics. During that week they learn so much from various fields. This summer camp has already ‘produced’ quite a few writers.

Also, every year creative translation workshop takes place with colleagues and translators from various countries. For many years we have been having close collaborations with Georgians – their poetry anthology has been translated and published in Lithuanian.  Last year, the Georgian almanac “Apra” which was dedicated to Lithuanian literature that has been published in Georgia. We have similar close working relationships with Ukrainians, Belarusians and especially Poles. Every year, and this year for the sixth time, we are meeting in Krasnogruda, a small village just of the Lithuanian-Polish border. “Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations” centre, which used to be Czeslaw Milosz aunties’ villa holds the workshops where Polish and Lithuanian translators translate Lithuanian poetry into Polish. We are very pleased that there is a new generation of young translators at the Warsaw University and now at least one Lithuanian book is translated to Polish and published each year.

Aside from these projects I have a lot of paperwork to do, as we also organise writers’ retreats and rent out parts of our building in order to receive some extra funds. Quite often my office serves as a psychologist’s office where writers just come to talk to me, tell their problems, their lives, seek for advice – we do a lot of talking…. And of course, if a writer dies, I go to their funeral and I write their obituary.

Since working here, have you noticed any changes in the literary community in Vilnius?

First of all I see many positive changes. After Lithuania’s independence our writers finally got the possibility to communicate and get involved with the Western literature world. At the beginning it was not very common and only a few writers would go to European festivals. But in the past 10 years our writers became active participants in many European and worldwide events, book fairs, festivals. Lithuanian authors are now translated into many different languages. Also, there are a lot of different cultural events organized in Lithuania. Writers from abroad are being invited, and their books are translated into Lithuanian language, so now we are able to get to know various literature from all over the world. And this is a big difference for us, because 20 years ago we did not have these opportunities.

On the other hand, I think writers are like wolves. They live alone or they live in small packs, but not big communities. There are 366 members of the union and maybe 65% are 60-90 years old. This older generation, I think, feels lonely. Maybe 15 or 25 years ago it wasn’t like this. Nowadays our society is becoming colder and, unfortunately, people don’t care about anyone but themselves. I think there is a big problem of communication between the younger and older generations in many former Soviet countries. We have the same issue in our Writers’ Union as well – the generations do not communicate. It didn’t always use to be like that. 20 years ago, you would see young writers together with old ones, sitting around a table, with vodka in their hands, having a great time. But something happened, and now this is not the case anymore.

What does the new generation of writers want to write about Lithuania?

There is a new kind of freedom. Writers that lived in the Soviet era now feel liberated to write whatever they want. The new generation, born after the Soviet Union, writes about very diverse things. There are those, who go back to the Soviet era and talk about service at the Soviet army or Lithuanian rebels and their adventures after the world war, or fight for the freedom and exile to Siberia and what people experienced in the concentration camps, prisons. There are quite a few historical novels that go back as far as the 13th, 16th or 18th centuries.

Some writers live abroad so they write about other countries, traveling, or anything else. Not all of them write about Lithuania, as they might not feel so connected to the country itself.

Now we have new problems and the main one is emigration. After Lithuania regained its independence, a lot of people have left the country. This wave of emigration was caused not by the Soviet Union, but by the financial situation. Sometimes the people that leave to find work abroad end up having to work like slaves. A lot of people move to England, or Scandinavian countries to work in warehouses under pretty poor working conditions but they have to go because they cannot find work here. Hence, now there are more authors who write about the emigrants, their life abroad and the difficulties these separated families go through (often parents go abroad leaving their children in Lithuania with the relatives). I was one of the first ones who wrote about these topics in my book White Zippers’ Tango, however, now there are more contemporary Lithuanian writers living abroad who write about their life in emigration and the problems they face. I wrote about moving to the United States. Years ago, the United States used to be the prime destination for the Lithuanians. Now there are new destinations but I decided to go to the USA as it’s quite a symbolic place. I worked for a family and was taking care of an old woman.  I wanted to understand what was so special about the US that made everyone want to go there. I wrote about what it was like to live where you work.

Did you enjoy living in the US?

It wasn’t for me. I think it’s a nice country, I was able to travel a little bit but I think you have to be born there to fit in. Maybe if I wasn’t a writer, it would have worked. I think writers must live around their languages. Here in Lithuania I feel like a fish in the sea. I have my newspapers, my books, there are people I can have discussions with. Now, with the internet you can have most of that wherever you go but I think it’s important to be surrounded by people with whom you can easily discuss your work and personal lives. Maybe some people can do that after living abroad for many years and they can write in those languages. But I think we have many examples of the new generation who know very good English and they live in Anglophone countries, but they still write in Lithuanian. It’s because it’s in their nature, I think.

Do you think there’s something about this city that supports writers?

I do, yes. I don’t know if you have seen ‘Eurostat’ survey on the internet that announced Vilnius as the best European city to live in. It overtook such cities as Stockholm, Copenhagen and Luxembourg. I believe there’s some truth in it. I think that everybody would like to go to Paris or Rome or somewhere like that. However, Vilnius has so much history to tell that writers can never run out of the material for their stories. There is also such a nice mosaic of nationalities – Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Jewish. We have so much material, there could be hundreds of writers writing about this city and they would never run out of the stories/ places/ people/ ideas. I’m afraid that I will not live long enough to write about everything that I want to write about, and I think that every writer in Vilnius, in Lithuania, has this problem.

Theatre in Vilnius is very good, we have so many singing poetry (classical and pop) festivals, we have two film festivals that last weeks and so many people come to see and participate in them. We have a good quality of life here. There is so much nature, you don’t have to spend three hours on public transport in order to cross the city, so I think people like it.

What is one of the greatest difficulties for Lithuanian writers?

I have mentioned earlier that since Lithuania regained its independence, there are still not that many Lithuanian writers that “go out” to the wide world. We do have a lot of very talented and interesting authors, however, they are not so good at putting themselves out there and selling themselves which means that sadly their books stay unrecognized. Often the bravest, the loudest and the most scandalous are heard and well known not only to the local, but also foreign publishers, however, it doesn’t mean that their work is the greatest.

English language is the most popular in literature, however, so not a lot publishing houses are interested in such a small country as Lithuania. People should know that our language is one of the oldest languages in the world, it’s a language that has kept a lot of old traditions and mythology. Those, who get interested in Lithuanian literature, and who translate Lithuanian books into other languages, I believe understand the importance of preserving this unique culture of a small nation of three million. I really hope that in the near future there will be more publishers interested in Lithuanian writers’ books, who will take the risk and translate Lithuanian books into their own languages.

There are a lot of agents and salesmen in Lithuania, however, none of them are working with literature. This makes it very difficult for Lithuanian writers to find an agent. Maybe it’s because of the language, but I really hope that this will change.

Riley Mang is LAR’s Editor-at-Large. Based in France, she also teaches English and writes book reviews. Find more of her work here.